by Martha Keyes
He laid his head back against the squabs and shut his eyes. He hadn’t slept much at The Bull. It seemed to be a trend recently, but even when he did manage to, he was haunted with dreams of Edith that left him feeling bereft upon waking.
It had been months since he had been to the family estate at Wooldon. It was his estate now, in fact, but he had insisted that his mother remain there while he spent most of his time in Town or at their smaller estate near Richmond. He had never felt like Wooldon belonged to him, and it had never felt like home since his father’s passing. His mother hadn’t wasted any time in demanding that all of his belongings be packed away—stuffed into one of the unused rooms where even the servants rarely ventured.
Wooldon sat within a small clearing of trees at the bottom of sloping, grassy hills. At the top of one of the hills, overlooking Wooldon on one side and the sea on the other, sat the parish church where his father and sister were buried. An unbroken line of windows stretched from one end of Wooldon’s red brick façade to the other, perfectly symmetrical, but for one small wing on the south end, added shortly before Elias’s father had died.
Elias tried to prepare himself for seeing his mother as the chaise drove into the small courtyard.
One of his mother’s new servants met him in the courtyard. “Where is my mother?” Elias asked.
“In the morning room, I believe, sir.”
Elias took in a breath, hoping it was enough to help him keep his calm. He and his mother had never got on together terribly well.
The scratching of a quill stopped as he opened the door to the morning room, and her head turned toward him. “Elias. I hadn’t any notion you intended to come.” She didn’t sound surprised, as one might expect a woman to sound if her son appeared unexpectedly after a long absence. She sounded like she might have if the maid had stepped in with a stack of post. Hardly interested.
“Yes,” he said, still standing just beyond the door. “I wished to come home for the anniversary of Father’s and Caroline’s deaths.”
“Ah, I see.” She turned back toward her writing. Responding to invitations, no doubt. “You have always been good at remembering these things. I had quite forgotten.”
Elias clenched his jaw. “Naturally,” he said.
Of course she had. Her mind was taken up by too many other things—which invitations to accept and turn down, how many times one might wear a dress before beginning to occasion comment, how many couples could sit comfortably to dine at the Wooldon table without the knocking of elbows.
“I shall only be here for two or three days, I imagine, before returning to Richmond.”
She sprinkled sand on the fresh ink, responding absently, “You are welcome to stay as long as you like, of course.”
Yes. It was his house, after all.
He bid her good day and left the room. He couldn’t help resenting her presence even more than usual. Somehow it made it feel more difficult for him to properly remember his father and sister when his mother was carrying on as if they had never even existed.
Elias sat down to dine alone. He had asked that the cook prepare his father’s favorite: larded hare. His mother was finishing her toilette in preparation for the invitation she had received to dine at the Cravens’ home a mile down the road.
She popped into the dining room when he was still eating the first course. “I should have thought to ask you when you first arrived, but it slipped my mind, I’m afraid. If you wish to come, I’m certain they wouldn’t mind at all. They are forever asking when you will return for a visit. I imagine you could ride over behind me once you are dressed. It looks to be quite dry this evening.”
He gave a polite smile. “That is very kind, but if you can please give them my regards and make my excuses, I would appreciate that.” He was looking forward to an evening alone at Wooldon.
She nodded, the feather in her cap fluttering with the action, and glanced at his plate with a wrinkling of the nose. “It’s been some time since I’ve seen that on a plate. I never could understand why your father loved it. Well, I am off, dear.” And she was gone.
When he had finished eating, he didn’t linger over his port, instead asking that the housekeeper, Mrs. Tinsley, be called for. The smile that broke onto her face at the sight of him was so familiar, surrounded though it was by extra lines, that Elias felt the first whisper of being home.
It was only after two or three minutes of chatting that Elias changed the subject. “Is everything of my father’s still kept in the green room?”
She nodded. “It is.”
“Thank you,” he said, moving toward the stairs.
“Oh, but” —the housekeeper rushed to catch up with him— “allow me to accompany you. You shall need a key, you know.”
A key? His mother kept every memory of his father and sister locked away? What, was she afraid she might accidentally stumble into the room and be forced to remember them?
“Thank you,” he said.
They took the stairs then walked the full length of the corridor, turning into the smaller one that branched off at the end. Both rooms in the small corridor were unused and had been for years. During his childhood, Elias had been scared of the corridor—it was never lit with candles, and he had imagined it stretching on and on, a deep abyss with any number of terrifying creatures.
Now it housed all that remained of his father and Caroline.
Mrs. Tinsley fiddled with the keys at her waist, inspecting two or three carefully before finding the right one. “Your mother is the only other one with a key—she doesn’t like to be disturbed when she comes in on Sunday mornings.” She opened the door and walked in, standing so that Elias could pass through.
It took him a moment to realize she was waiting for him. He blinked and stepped into the room. “On Sunday mornings?”
She pushed the door so that it almost closed. “Yes, every Sunday morning before church. Just for half an hour or so.”
Elias stared at Mrs. Tinsley, but she didn’t notice. She was tugging at the holland cover that was draped over his father’s favorite armchair.
“Never says a word about it,” she continued, “other than to ensure the servants know that they are not allowed in this room. Though I’ve noticed when I come in to clean occasionally that this cover always needs adjusting, and these two items sit on this small table beside it.” With a brief nod, she indicated the small doll and the pocket watch that sat on a narrow, mahogany table.
“I hadn’t realized she ever came in here. I imagined that all of this had remained undisturbed since the last time I was here.”
Mrs. Tinsley pressed her lips together in something of a grimace. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything. Your mother is very private.”
“I shan’t mention it to her.” He had a feeling she would be very displeased with the housekeeper if he did. He picked up the doll. “I had forgotten about this thing. What was it Caroline called her?”
“Lady Jane,” Mrs. Tinsley said with a smile. “Though her full name was Lady Jane Elizabeth Granville—
“—of Harcourt,” Elias finished with a growing smile.
Mrs. Tinsley laughed. “She wouldn’t let anyone forget it.”
“No, indeed.” His smile faded slightly, and he looked to Mrs. Tinsley. “Why does my mother wish to be so private about coming here?”
She frowned. “Everyone handles grief in a different way, I have found. Your mother doesn’t like to speak of such things, so I can only make a guess as to her reasoning. She has always abhorred displays of emotion, though, and I have wondered if perhaps she fears being overcome in the presence of others.”
Elias nodded, feeling the need to swallow down his own emotions. He picked up his father’s pocket watch. The little grooves of the etched design on the front and back had rubbed away in spots—his father had forever been pulling it out. Maybe he had realized his time was in shorter supply than everyone else’s.
“Two years tomorrow,” he said.
&
nbsp; “And twelve years for Caroline next week.” Mrs. Tinsley adjusted the doll on the table ever so slightly with a small sniff. “What I wouldn’t give to see her grown into a fine young lady.”
“She’d have married long since, I’m sure,” Elias said with a half-smile. “She was forever forcing her toys into matrimony, wasn’t she?”
Mrs. Tinsley laughed and nodded, her eyes still on the doll. “That she was.” Her gaze moved to Elias, a bit of sauciness entering into her eyes. “I imagine she would have forced even you into matrimony if she were still here.”
He smiled wryly, moving toward a pile of odds and ends nearby. “It’s not me she’d have to force,” he said softly.
“What’s this now?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.” He reached for a small, leather box and opened it. “Ah, father could never resist a fancy pair of sleeve buttons.” This pair was white enamel with a fleur de lis painted in blue.
Mrs. Tinsley walked over and squinted at them. “I remember the day he decided to put them away—afraid he might come under suspicion as a revolutionary.”
Elias smiled. “He always just liked the symbol, didn’t he?”
It felt good to talk about Caroline and his father. They felt a bit less far away in that dusty room.
He was secretly glad to know that his mother wasn’t as heartless as she had seemed for so long. Just as Mrs. Tinsley said, everyone needed to grieve in their own way. His mother’s way was apparently both secret and solitary. He just wished it hadn’t been.
After Caroline’s death, Elias and his father had done little things to remember her—placing her dolls in her favorite spots in the house, telling stories of her amusing antics at dinner. He had forgotten how healing it had been to do such things. Rather than enhance his sorrow, it had helped him feel connected to Caroline.
When his father had passed away, though, he’d had no one to do such things with, and only when he met Miss Perry did he begin to realize how much it had affected him—or how much he had been trying to pretend it didn’t affect him.
He wasn’t so different from his mother as he had always thought.
Admitting that he was well and truly in love with Edith seemed to have opened the floodgates. Now he was feeling it all, the bitter and the sweet.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Four times Edith had reached for the bell during the course of the day, intending to ring for a carriage to be brought around, only to stop herself. Matthew had told her that Elias was at Wooldon. Tomorrow would be the anniversary of his father’s death, and it seemed wrong to spring herself upon him, expecting him to reciprocate immediately after all she had put him through.
Besides, Edith had never known such self-doubt, such painful and constant deliberation. It was enough to make her wish for the past—before anyone had thought it might be amusing to play tricks on one another. They had all certainly got more than they bargained for.
But though nerves and doubt plagued Edith, she couldn’t truly wish to be transported back in time even if it were a possibility. Difficult as it all had been, she had some sense that there was purpose and importance to what she had been through. Like a purifying fire, perhaps. She could only hope that, after the singeing and burning, she would come out intact.
Though she longed to yank the bell cord and set off in pursuit of Elias, she promised herself to wait. She needed time for her thoughts and emotions to settle. Everything had been so rushed for the past week—she didn’t want to rush into the most important decision she would ever make.
But when the next day dawned, the desire to follow after Elias hadn’t abated. Edith tried to eat the toast in front of her at the breakfast table, but her stomach flipped and churned oddly. She was aware of Mercy’s eyes on her every now and again.
“Edith,” Mercy finally said once her husband had risen and left to go for a ride. “You are jittery. What is it?”
She looked Mercy in the eye. Edith didn’t confide in people. She didn’t trust them with the truth, and she never had. But if she was going to trust her heart to Elias, that would have to change.
“Is it Elias?” Mercy asked gently.
Edith swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded, feeling her limbs tremble with fear at laying her emotions open to someone, even someone as kind as Mercy.
“You have fallen in love with him, haven’t you?”
Edith shut her eyes. “I don’t know, Mercy. I don’t know what it is I feel for him. It may be some twisted version of hate, for all I know. But it feels like love. And if it isn’t, I can’t imagine what love might feel like.”
Mercy smiled her understanding. “You cannot truly think you hate Elias, Edith. There is a vast difference between hate and what exists between the two of you. I have given it much thought myself, and I realized something: you are never more alive than when Elias is in the room.”
Edith let out a laugh. “But what does that mean? I can assure you that, while I am more aware of his best qualities than I used to be, I have not become suddenly blind to his worst ones.”
Mercy laughed. “I would be worried if you had! Love is not blind—or at least the most enduring love is not. Marrying someone, promising to love someone is merely a vow to take the good and the bad together. One cannot be expected to love or even like another person all of the time. Heaven knows there are times when I despise even myself. But I never give up on myself. And when I married Solomon, I promised to never give up on him, either.”
Edith fiddled with the napkin on her lap. “But what if I make Elias miserable?”
Mercy grasped Edith’s hands in hers. “It is not your responsibility to make him happy. It is your opportunity, rather, to love him. And the fact that you are so concerned with his happiness is the best evidence I can imagine that you do indeed love him.”
Edith swallowed. “I do.” She gave a watery laugh. “Much as I have tried not to, I do.”
“Then stop trying not to and put that energy into loving him. With every bit of your soul.”
Edith glanced at the bell again, and her heart raced at the thought of going. Oh, how she wanted to go!
She clamped her eyes shut. “But he is mourning, Mercy. Today is the anniversary of his father’s death—hardly the time for such a declaration.”
Mercy looked at her intently. “Is it not? I heard Matthew saying that Elias’s mother has never been one for grief. Don’t you think he might like someone beside him? And who better than the woman he loves?”
Edith thought on their conversation at The Old Dog and Pheasant: Elias’s insistence that Miss Perry have the opportunity to properly mourn her brother, and his short comment about never having talked through his grief with anyone as Miss Perry was doing with them.
He shouldn’t have to mourn alone.
In three quick steps, Edith was ringing the bell, while Mercy looked on with approbation and rose from the table.
“What can I do to help?” Mercy asked, striding over. “Shall I get your bonnet?”
Edith clasped her hands to still them, but the trembling merely traveled up her arms and down into her knees. “Yes, if you please. For I need one other thing.”
“What?”
“The marriage license.”
Mercy’s brows flew up, and she followed Edith from the room. “Are you intending to elope in earnest this time, then?”
“I hardly know,” Edith said truthfully. “I must say, the prospect is certainly appealing, for I can’t imagine facing the lot of you with your self-satisfied smiles beaming up at us from the pews.”
Mercy laughed and started toward the stairs. “I am the last person with ground to stand on against an elopement, so I shall respect whatever decision you make. But I assure you that I would be looking at you both with the most exquisite and genuine happiness possible if you decided not to elope.”
Edith narrowed her eyes playfully then turned to the servant the bell had brought and asked that the chaise be readied immediately.
; She hurried to her father’s study, where the marriage license still sat upon the desk and breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t burned it. Never had she thought to look upon her own marriage license—or to read the words with a thrill of exhilaration and nerves.
Mercy met her in the hallway, placing the bonnet upon Edith’s head as they walked toward the front door.
“Send word when you know your plans, won’t you?” She helped Edith into the chaise.
“Of course,” Edith replied, shutting the door and leaning her body through the open window. “But Mercy?”
Mercy raised her brows questioningly.
Edith hesitated, clutching at the sill of the chaise window. “What if I am too late?”
Mercy took in a deep breath and pursed her lips. “I don’t think you will be.” An amused smile crept upon her lips. “Recall that but two weeks ago neither of you had any notion of love or marriage.”
“And if I am too late, despite that?”
“If you are…” Mercy took Edith’s gloved hand in hers. “Then Elias will at least know of your love—for that is no small thing, Edith, to be so loved by another person that she would willingly join herself to you for the rest of her life.”
Edith nodded and leaned out to kiss Mercy on the cheek. “You are right. How very aggravating of you.”
Mercy only smiled and nodded to the driver to set the horses to.
Edith gave a little wave and turned to sit forward in her seat, shutting her eyes and forcing herself to breathe. She would tell Elias she loved him, she would sit with him and celebrate the life of his father, and she would expect nothing in return from him.
She loved him, whether he could return her love or not.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The sea air whipped at Elias’s hat, and he put a hand on top to keep it from floating off his head and out of the parish cemetery. He looked up at the leaves above him, fluttering in the wind, and then to the church itself. He doubted there was a more beautiful parish church in all the Southwest. Just beyond the walls of the church grounds, a small path led to the rocky coast, where waves could be heard crashing and receding. “God’s own church,” his father had called it.