Not Quite a Husband

by Sherry Thomas

  Her father squeezed her hand hard. It was the strongest squeeze yet. She interlaced their fingers and rested the back of his hand against her cheek.

  “I don’t suppose”—she was suddenly choking a little. “I don’t suppose I’ve ever thanked you for letting me go to medical school. Or for marrying Toddy—she was wonderful.”

  She touched her other hand to his bearded jaw. “Do you remember the summer when I was six? You came with Toddy and me on our walks a few times. One time we went to the village. And you bought me a box of toffee. Another time we picked wild strawberries together and had them with fresh cream at home.”

  He squeezed her hand again, but it was a weaker squeeze.

  “I don’t think you cared for wild strawberries,” she raised her voice, as if trying to make herself heard to someone who was moving further and further away. “But Toddy kept giving you looks, so you ate them anyway, because I picked them and I loved them.”

  The squeeze, when it came, was even more anemic. He was fading away. Something fierce gripped her heart. “I love you.”

  To that, Geoffrey Asquith gave one final squeeze.

  She sat for a long time, his hand held in her lap. But he did not exhibit any more signs of consciousness.

  At dawn, when she woke up again, he had already passed away.

  The house plunged into mourning. All the window blinds were pulled down—they would remain down until Geoffrey Asquith’s body departed the house on the day of his funeral. Black crape was draped over the front door. Mourning clothes arrived by the boxful, in crape for Mrs. Asquith, in paramatta silk for Bryony and Callista.

  As grieving family members were not expected to worry about funeral arrangements, her father’s closest friends took care of them. Friends and acquaintances respected the privacy of the bereaved by not visiting, but Mrs. Asquith’s relations did call on her to offer their condolences.

  In their black dresses, Bryony and Callista worked in the study, sorting their father’s papers. They were knee-deep in old invitations, cards, correspondences—her father had never thrown away anything addressed to him, it would seem. There were also boxes of manuscripts, newspaper clippings, and scraps of paper with various hastily scribbled fragments of thoughts on everything from Donne’s wit to Johnson’s hygiene.

  “I wonder if they’ve gone yet,” said Callista, looking up from where she sat on the carpet.

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Bourne and Mrs. Lawrence.” Mrs. Bourne and Mrs. Lawrence were Mrs. Asquith’s sisters. “Mrs. Lawrence grates on Stepmama. I don’t think she can take very much of Mrs. Lawrence just now.”

  “I’ll go take a look and issue a medical opinion that she must have more rest.”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course.”

  But before Bryony reached the entry hall, she heard footsteps descending the staircase and women’s voices. And then her own name.

  “… never understood what Leo Marsden saw in Bryony Asquith. He could have had anyone. I tell you I wasn’t the least bit surprised that he wanted the annulment.”

  “Oh, come, Letty, you don’t know why they decided on an annulment. Marriages are like shoes; only those on the inside know.”

  “Well, everyone knew Leo Marsden was miserable married to her. What kind of happily married man would give dinner parties by himself and then go out and gamble all night?”

  “Shhh, Letty. The servants.”

  They left. Bryony placed a hand over her heart. It throbbed in agitation. In her three years abroad she’d forgotten what it was like to be in London again, surrounded by so many reminders of her unhappy marriage.

  “Bryony,” said Callista behind her. “What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing. Mrs. Bourne and Mrs. Lawrence just left.”

  “Good. Can’t stand Mrs. Lawrence. Always babbling about things she knows nothing about. Stupid cow.”

  What did it say about Leo and herself that even a know-nothing woman like Mrs. Lawrence knew that Leo had been miserable married to her?

  “Well, don’t stand there, come with me,” Callista walked backward toward the study, beckoning at Bryony with her hands. “Come and see what I’ve found.”

  What Callista had found was an eight-inch-by-ten-inch photograph of a group of picnickers, laid flat on the surface of the desk. Bryony gasped. It was the picnic of her sixth birthday. There she was, seated at the front and center of the group in her new frock, which in the photograph was an indistinct light medium brown, but which in real life had been a lovely shade of apple green. There was Will, looking as if he’d never heard of such a thing as running about in the nude—the photograph had been taken before the entire party piled into two charabancs for the chosen picnic site two miles away, and therefore, before his memorable incident. And there was Toddy, standing in the back row, looking so impossibly young that it broke Bryony’s heart to realize that by the time the picture was taken, she had only one more year to live.

  “It’s your mother,” she said softly.

  “Yes, I know,” Callista said wistfully. “I always recognize her, like looking at myself in costume.”

  Bryony fingered the edge of the photograph.

  “This was one of the best days of my life.”

  Callista smiled. “I can imagine. And, look, there’s Leo.” She pointed at the picture.

  She saw him the same moment as Callista pointed him out, the chubby child to her right. He wore a dark-colored dress, the occasion of her sixth birthday being long before he was breeched—given his first outfit with trousers.

  “My goodness, he was so small.”

  “He should have been. He was two,” said Callista, smiling fondly. “And already he couldn’t stop looking at you.”

  Bryony wouldn’t have described it that way. But in the photograph, Leo’s face was turned curiously toward her, as if she were more interesting than the camera, more absorbing than anyone else around him.

  It was a dizzying sensation, to see the two people she loved the most together in one frame. And there she was, basking in happiness, basking in life.

  “May I have this?”

  “Of course,” said Callista. “The moment I saw it, I knew it belonged to you.”

  The dark waters of the English Channel parted reluctantly before the bow of the ferry. The sea was choppy, fog-shrouded, and England, on a good day visible from Calais, seemed to be receding, rather than getting closer.

  He’d been on the road forever.

  Two days after Bryony left for Nowshera, Imran and the coolies arrived in Chakdarra. They’d been staying at a village three marches away, waiting for the fighting to subside.

  Getting everything and everyone to Nowshera proved tricky. Travel had become impossible between Malakand and Nowshera. At several points along the dusty fifty miles, traffic degenerated into complete logjams with mules, pony carts, camels, and men unable to move two steps one way or another, broiling under a relentless sun.

  Nowshera was in chaos, with regiments arriving from the south, regiments departing to the north, and all the pack animals and armaments that came and went with the regiments. Leo divested himself of everything he’d acquired for the trip. To each of the coolies and the ayah he gave a mule. All the horses he’d bought along the way he divided among Imran, Hamid, and Saif Khan, except the valiant mare that had carried him and Bryony safely to Chakdarra: She was going to spend the rest of her carefree days in an English pasture.

  It was a fight to get out of Nowshera with Udyana—he’d named the mare after the ancient Buddhist kingdom of Swat—and Bryony’s things. He called in all the connections he had and shamelessly exploited his status as a hero of Chakdarra. The bamboozling paid off in the end. He got his way, boarded the train exhausted, and slept all the way to Bombay.

  P&O steamers departed Bombay every Friday during the southwest monsoon. One had left three days before he arrived. But he was lucky: Austrian Lloyd’s had an unscheduled extra steamer that departed the next
day for Trieste. From Trieste he was again on the train, crossing the Alps from Italy into France, to Paris, where Matthew met him, and then on to Calais and the Channel crossing that would finally take him back to England.

  To the rest of his life.

  Sometimes he missed the war. Not the fear, not the exhaustion, and most certainly not the killing, but the almost blinding clarity of things. In that crucible, everything between him and Bryony had been distilled to the very essence: Only love had mattered, nothing else.

  But as Chakdarra receded into the past, old fears and doubts crept back. Once the exhilaration of their reunion wore off, once the newness of their lovemaking was no longer so new, how would she see him? No matter how careful he was, invariably someday he would do something to make her angry. What then? Would all the old unhappiness rush to the fore? Would she remember that he had once betrayed her and regret that she’d ever given him a second chance?

  Or would she protect herself from the beginning by keeping a certain distance from him, so that their closeness would always fall short of true communion, always denying him that final forgiveness so that he could never hurt her again?

  And he, was he strong enough to persist in the face of this lack of trust? It had been this very fear that had led him to reject her overture in the dak bungalow, unwilling to let the emotions of a moment dictate the rest of his life, afraid to be either an abject lackey at her side, or worse, a bitter mate resentful over being forever condemned for one mistake.

  He looked down into the photograph in his hand, their wedding photograph. He used to think that she looked wooden. But no, she looked haunted, her eyes as bleak as the rains of January. How could anyone come back from that? How could she ever truly love him again?

  He returned the photograph to his pocket at the sound of Matthew’s footsteps.

  “The fog is lifting,” said Matthew. “We should see Dover soon.”

  They stood shoulder to shoulder on the bow. The fog dissipated, the sun shone, and even the opaque, unromantic waters of the English Channel glinted in the morning light.

  When the white cliffs of Dover came into view, Leo did not have an epiphany; he made a choice.

  Trust ran both ways. How could he ask her to trust him when he hardly trusted her? He would trust her, in her love, in her strength, in her decency and fortitude.

  And when the time came, he would find the strength in himself.

  Her father’s body lay in repose in the drawing room of the town house for two days. On the third day, a black hearse, big as a rail carriage, drew up before the house and bore him to his funeral.

  Women were often discouraged from attending the funeral, for fear that, overwhelmed by grief, they would cause a scene by breaking down in sobs or even fainting from a surfeit of feelings. But both Bryony and Callista chose to be present, to accompany their father on the last leg of his journey on this earth.

  The service was solemn and moving. But Bryony spent it thinking more of the living than the dead. There was nothing more she could do for or about her father, but there was much she could do for Callista, for Mrs. Asquith, and for her stepbrothers. When she resumed work, she ought to try to be less of an automaton—a bit of compassion for her patients wouldn’t hurt. And as for her future students at the medical college, she could smile once in a while so that they would not be too intimidated to ask questions.

  The organist played “Now the Laborer’s Task Is O’er.” On the shoulders of his friends, her father’s casket traveled slowly toward the door of the church, followed by his daughters.

  Abruptly Callista poked Bryony in the side. Bryony turned toward her. Callista pointed with her chin. Bryony looked in the general direction her sister indicated and saw nothing but rows upon rows of mourners, some of whom looked vaguely recognizable, others she could not identify if her scalpel arm depended on it.

  And then she saw them: Will Marsden, Matthew Marsden, and their eldest brother Jeremy, the Earl of Wyden. They were a striking trio, all blond curls and archangel faces. Only when she was about to look away did she see their taller, darker-haired baby brother, who actually stood closest to the nave of the church—closest to her.

  Their time in India could roughly be divided between malaria and war, with Leo laid low on one end by the toxicity of quinine and on the other by his wounds and the fatigue of continuous battle. His clothes, by the time they’d met, had seen much service on the frontier, and were frayed and tired if not actually threadbare.

  But there inside the church, surrounded by sunlight streaming in from the stained-glass windows, in perfect health and an immaculately tailored frock coat, he was something else altogether.

  This was the young man who had felled her with one smile. He did not look like an archangel—if archangels looked as he did, there would be no women of virtue left in Paradise. Instead, he was an old-fashioned Adonis, fully human, yet so ravishing goddesses fell in love with him.

  God, he was beautiful. And for the life of her, she did not know how she managed to keep walking.

  She didn’t register the black crape armband he wore until she’d walked past him.

  He’d come in mourning, as a son of the family.

  The interment was private. Bryony and Callista each tossed in a handful of white rose petals on their father’s casket. Then Callista tossed in another handful for Mrs. Asquith, who had not felt equal to the funeral—it was understood that the bereaved sometimes preferred to grieve alone, rather than fall apart in public. Angus, the younger of their stepbrothers, dropped a handful of earth for himself, and another for Paul, whose withered limbs, as a result of his childhood poliomyelitis, made it difficult for him to leave the house.

  As they made their way out of the cemetery, Callista was again the first person to spot Leo: He and Matthew waited for them by the Asquith carriage, poor Matthew practically invisible against Leo’s luminosity.

  A cauldron of emotions spilled over in Bryony. Tenderness. Longing. Pure bedazzled admiration. And happiness enough to float the entire Royal Navy.

  Callista embraced both Leo and Matthew. “Leo, you ugly stoat, welcome home. Matthew, my goodness, you are more gorgeous every time I see you. And when are you going to offer for me? I’m not getting any younger.”

  Matthew chuckled softly.

  “Soon, Callista, soon. Just now on the Channel crossing Matthew was moaning your name when he thought we were going down,” said Leo, smiling. He shook hands with her stepbrother. “Angus, good to see you.”

  For Bryony, probably out of consideration of her elderly knees, he spared her a full smile, which would have sent her pitching forward into the side of the carriage. “Mrs. Marsden.”

  He really should have addressed her as Miss Asquith. An annulment meant that they’d never been legally married. But the way he said Mrs. Marsden, as if they were alone and he had every intention of stripping her naked, made her heart pound. As did the signal he sent via his mourning attire—besides the crape armband, he also wore a black hatband. She could already hear the gossips: He came to the funeral dressed as if the deceased were still his father-in-law, as if he were still married to Bryony Asquith.

  “Messieurs Marsden,” she answered. “Thank you for coming.”

  “We were wondering if you wouldn’t care to come to our house for tea,” said Matthew.

  “I think that is a lovely idea,” said Callista.

  “I’m not sure,” said Bryony. “We are not supposed to be moving in society so soon after our father’s passing.”

  “You are not moving in society,” Leo said firmly. “It’s just family.”

  The only family connection the Asquiths and Marsdens had between them was Leo and Bryony’s annulled marriage.

  “You are absolutely right, Leo,” said Callista. “Shall we?”

  “What about Mrs. Asquith?” Bryony asked. “Only Paul is there with her and Paul took Father’s passing rather hard himself.”

  “I will keep them company,” Angus volunteere
d. “The two of you go.”

  “Still …”

  “It’s all right,” said Callista. “We won’t stay long.”

  Angus took the Asquith carriage home. Everyone else piled into the Wyden carriage. During the ride, Bryony learned that Matthew had left his holiday in Biarritz to meet Leo in Paris. And when he couldn’t persuade Leo to go to Biarritz with him, had decided to accompany Leo to London instead.

  They’d literally just detrained at Victoria Station when they learned that Geoffrey Asquith’s funeral was being held that very afternoon. They had barely enough time to buy Leo his mourning crape and rush home to change out of their traveling clothes before driving to the service.

  “Leo robbed me of my coat,” said Matthew. “He had to look good.”

  “Liar.” Leo smiled. “Matthew insisted that I take his coat, since I couldn’t go to my father-in-law’s funeral in a lounge suit, which was all I had at that point.”

  My father-in-law. Flustered, Bryony kept her face turned toward the window, so that she did not have to deal with the rampant curiosity in the carriage.

  Callista pulled Bryony aside after they alit, before they entered the Wyden house. “Did the two of you marry again? Please tell me yes. If he is my brother-in-law again, he is less likely to kill me for what I did.”

  Bryony looked at her a moment, then leaned in and whispered in her ear. “He won’t kill you. He just wants you committed to an asylum.”

  The Wyden house was full of men. Jeremy and Will had come up from Oxfordshire without their spouses and children: Matthew and Leo would shortly go down to the family seat to meet everyone.

  “I can’t tell you how glad we are you ladies could join us,” said Will. “Jeremy was born mute, I am so quiet and retiring, Matthew never knows any good gossip, and Leo is the most boring person in the world.”