by Regina Darcy
“Does she think I would risk scandal by staying the night?”
“Mrs Burton perceives a situation and then responds to it. I think that, if you were planning to spend the night, you would need to be seen leaving, send your carriage away, and then walk back here and climb in through a window.”
“Which would need to be conveniently left open in order for this surreptitious invasion to take place.”
“Yes, well, there are certain flaws in the scenario. But Mrs Burton will see you safely to the door and—what was that?”
Joshua heard it too, a loud sound that broke through the rushing noise of the rain falling outside. “I don’t think it was thunder,” he said.
The drawing room door opened to admit Sutherland. “My lady, has anything happened?” he asked in concern, scanning the drawing room as if he expected villainy.
“We heard the noise as well, Sutherland. Perhaps we had better check the outside.”
“Yes, sir,” Sutherland agreed.
“Surely, you do not think that there is any danger,” Tabitha said, following the two out of the drawing room.
“Likely it was only a tree branch falling in the wind,” Joshua said. “But it is better to check and be sure. Sutherland, I—”
Tabitha felt her breath catch in her throat as she saw the front door open and a shadowed figure, entirely concealed from top to bottom in a cloak, stumbled in through the entrance.
Joshua hastily grabbed the poker from the fireplace and, pushing Tabitha behind him, called out, “What are you about? You are trespassing! Who are you and what do you think you are doing here?”
“It is not for you to question me,” replied a tired voice which still managed to convey irritation and arrogance, “but I will ask you the questions. What are you doing in my house?”
Tabitha shrieked as the figure’s hand rose to remove the cloak’s hood.
“Arthur!”
SIX
Her husband, returned from the dead, stood in the entranceway. The sturdy frame that she remembered appeared thinner, and even in the dim light, she could see that his flesh was sallow.
“You are unwell? I—I thought you were dead,” she said in a faltering tone.
“Did you?” he inquired with a flash of his remembered rudeness as he sent a swift glance in Joshua’s direction. “I allowed you to think that I was dead. Apparently,” his lips twisted in a scowl, “I was quite successful.”
“Arthur, you must not—”
“See here,” Joshua said, “you have come upon this lady with no warning after an absence so prolonged that the courts declared you dead. Do you not think you owe her more of an explanation than cryptic comments?”
“What I owe my wife is for me to determine. You, sir, are in my house and I have not invited you. Sutherland, show this interloper to the door!”
Sutherland looked to his mistress for instruction.
Arthur Clemens, whatever misfortunes had ruled him over the past four years, was accustomed to being the master in his own home and he glared at his butler. “Do not look to the Viscountess for your orders,” he ordered. “I am here, and it is to me that you must answer.”
“Yes, but—my lord, you have not been here,” Sutherland replied haplessly.
“I am here now, am I not?”
“How do we know that you are who you claim to be?” Joshua demanded. “You show up without warning and claim the identity of a dead man. You acknowledge that you have allowed yourself to be perceived as dead and you make no apologies to Lady Randstand for the grief and uncertainty that have been her lot since you disappeared. Now, you are here as if you never left.”
“I do not answer to you, sir. I do not even know who you are.”
“I am Joshua Hendrickson.”
“The name means nothing to me,” Arthur replied dismissively. “If you are my wife’s lover, I will have you know that I will not tolerate—”
“Arthur!” Tabitha, enraged by the suggestion, was moved to respond. “How dare you accuse me of infidelity! I have been a faithful wife during the years of your absence and now, thinking myself a widow, I have maintained the same standards that I held to as your wife. You have no right to accuse me of violating my marriage vows.”
The door which led from the downstairs kitchen area to the entranceway opened and Mrs Burton emerged.
“What is all this—My lord!” she gasped as she beheld the Viscount. “We thought you were dead!”
“It is readily apparent to all but the blind and witless that I am not dead,” he snapped. “I did not expect my homecoming to be marred by insubordinate servants, a faithless wife, and a stranger with no right to be here!”
Tabitha, who had endured this frightful turn of events with as much composure as she could muster, was incensed by Arthur’s sweeping critique of everyone in the room.
“It is not Mr Hendrickson who lacks the right to be here,” her voice rang out. “It is you! You have returned from the dead, from an absence of four years as if you were only away on an errand, yet you return to us as imperious as ever. What right do you have to command anyone here?”
“It is my house! You are my wife! These are my servants!” he returned, his proprietary sensibilities outraged that these facts were not understood.
“You speak as if you are here to inventory your possessions,” Tabitha railed. “What sort of a man returns from an absence of four years, with neither a word or a letter to explain his actions, and presumes to criticise the ones who have had to carry on while he was gone?”
“Judging from appearances,” Arthur retorted with another cutting glance at Joshua, standing silent and supportive in front of Tabitha, “you have managed to ‘carry on’ very well!”
“You have no right to speak to me thus—”
“My lord, Lady Randstand has been nothing but proper in her—”
“My lord, you surely cannot mean the foul things you are saying against Her Ladyship—”
“Lord Randstand, you owe your wife an apology!”
Arthur faced them all as if he were before a firing squad. “Be silent, the lot of you!” he commanded. “I had my reasons for what I was doing. I am home now, and I intend to stay here.”
“The courts may have something to say about that,” Joshua retorted. “You will have to prove that you are who you say you are. In the meantime, this is Lady Randstand’s residence and whether you may stay here or not depends entirely upon her.”
It was faultless, if unwelcome logic. Arthur seemed to lose some of his aplomb as he considered Joshua’s words.
Perceiving the advantage, Joshua continued. “You can hardly expect your virtuous wife to allow you to spend the night merely because you claim to be her husband.”
“She knows I am her husband!” Arthur returned. “She called me by my name.”
“It could be a vicious plot, or a ploy to take advantage of Lady Randstand. You have no right to stay the night.”
“This is my house!”
“You are, in the view of the court, a dead man. You have no property. In order to claim what you say is yours, you are obliged to plead your case before a judge.”
“You dare to tell me that I may not stay in my own house?”
“I am telling you that, until you are proven to be first, alive, and second, to be Arthur Clemens, you cannot expect Lady Randstand to welcome you into her home. For it is her home now, just as your son is her son and your possessions are her possessions. She is a widow in the eyes of London, indeed, in the eyes of everyone who knows her, and she has maintained a reputation of integrity and propriety. Should she then admit a man claiming to be her dead husband into her home, and risk not only her reputation, but also her life?”
“You are an imbecile,” Arthur said, but his voice was faltering. He leaned on the mantel over the fireplace, his strength failing him. He looked to his wife. “I have nowhere else to go,” he said.
He stretched out his arm as if beseeching his wife to take pity on hi
m, but then, overcome by exhaustion and whatever travails had weakened him, he stumbled and fell to the floor in a faint.
“Sutherland,” Joshua said immediately, “help me lift him and bring him into the drawing room.”
The two men lifted Arthur by his arms and legs and brought him into the drawing room, laying him on the long sofa.
“My lady,” Mrs Burton said, for once in her very efficient life uncertain of what to do, “should I send for the doctor?”
“No,” Tabitha decided. “First, we must learn what the Viscount has to tell us, and I do not think that he will able to do that just now. Sutherland, if you and Mr Hendrickson will bring him to one of the guest rooms upstairs and put him to bed, I shall examine him to see if any wound has caused this faint.”
“There is no blood,” Joshua said. “I should venture to guess that he has been through some sort of physical experience which has left him weak. Perhaps with rest he will recover and be able to offer more information tomorrow.”
Joshua was speaking matter-of-factly but Tabitha knew that he was forcing himself to do so. This had been the night when she intended to give Joshua her permission to court her, with the intention of announcing an engagement before she and Micah returned to Randstand for the harvest.
Her entire future had suddenly been upended by Arthur’s reappearance and she knew that the same was true for Joshua.
When Joshua left the bedroom where he and the butler had taken Arthur, Tabitha was waiting outside the room. Sutherland continued to go down the stairs as if he wished to give the two privacy. Mrs Burton was downstairs heating water, convinced that at some point in the proceedings, the Viscount would need some sort of bathing.
The corridor was empty except for Tabitha and Joshua. Micah had not awakened during the unexpected interruption of his father’s arrival, but he and Miss Allen’s rooms were on the third floor of the house and it was possible that he had heard nothing.
Tabitha sighed. She could foresee a seemingly endless succession of difficult events ahead: Arthur’s return would be the subject of excited gossip in the city and that would cast an unfavourable light upon her relationship with Joshua, even though there had been nothing amiss in their budding romance as long as she was a widow. But she was no longer a widow; instead, she was once again a wife. Her heart started beating erratically.
Joshua’s improvised scenario casting aspersions on Arthur’s return would not withstand reality. She knew that her husband, pronounced dead, was very much alive. She took a deep breath to try to calm her nerves.
Micah would need to be introduced to a father he did not remember. How to explain to a young child that his father was not dead at all, but alive? How would Arthur respond to fatherhood? Would he approve of the way in which she was bringing up their son, or would he seek to undo her efforts, deriding motherhood as insufficient for the raising of a son? She wrung her hands, the erratic beating of her heart starting up again.
With Arthur alive, her father would have an ally in his belief that Tabitha was intellectually inferior to the men who knew what was best for her. Her determination to distance herself from her father’s domination would be undermined by the return of a husband who was just as domineering in his attitudes.
Mr Ochsbury would feel vindicated that the return of a living Viscount effectively nullified the independence of a Viscountess, who was no longer a widow, entitled to handle her own finances and manage her own affairs.
“I feel vanquished,” Tabitha whispered. “Everything that I hoped to achieve is now in tatters.”
Joshua took her hand. His touch, once so comforting, was now a reminder that she was another man’s wife and any encouragement she had given Joshua, however innocent, was now a violation of her marriage.
“Tabitha,” he whispered, devoid of words to solve the matter. Even though the Viscount was unconscious inside the adjacent room and the door was shut, they were both conscious of the fact that they had no right to share confidences or hold out for promises that could not be kept.
“You had better go,” she said, her voice unsteady with the effort of holding back her tears.
“Will I see you again?”
“I do not see how that will be possible. Oh, Joshua, I had such great hopes!”
Joshua took her hands in his, raised them to his lips, and kissed them. He would never know the touch of her lips against his. His hopes of marriage and the intimacy that matrimony entailed were gone.
Would he ever meet a woman like Tabitha?
Did even he want to, when it was Tabitha that he loved? He pulled his hands away and clenched his fists at his side.
“Good-bye,” he said softly, then turned around and walked away.
Tabitha leaned against the wall as if she could not stand on her own strength while she watched him descend the staircase. She heard Sutherland bid him goodnight as he handed him his hat and coat. She heard the door close on her beloved Joshua and all the dreams that were leaving with him.
Tabitha raised her hands to her face, turning her fingers into fists as she struggled to stop the tears cascading from her eyes. They continued to fall, even as she convulsively gave way to silent sobbing, her entire body taken over by a grief that she could not even name.
How long she stood there, she could not say, until finally, she straightened her back and, putting her hand on the doorknob, went into the bedroom where her husband had been taken. The candle beside his bed provided limited illumination, but it was enough for her to see him. Sutherland and Joshua had undressed him before putting him underneath the bed linens.
Lacking a nightshirt, his bare chest was visible above the sheets and blankets covering his lower limbs. She would have to check the closets to see if any of his clothing had been left here from four years ago. It was possible that some things remained; the daytime attire would be somewhat out of fashion. . . There might be nightshirts that he could wear to sleep in. . . She would ask Mrs Burton to search for these things. . .
She tried to organise her thoughts by concentrating on the mundane domestic tasks associated with taking care of her husband, while staving off the absurd circumstances which required her to do so. She had thought herself a widow, free to move on with her life, to fall in love with another man, to—
But she was not free. She had never been free, she realised as she sat in the chair at Arthur’s bedside. She had enjoyed the illusory period of liberty because it freed her from the fetters of a marriage which offered no joy or comfort. Just as she had begun to surrender to the hope that perhaps her life could be given a new direction, Arthur had appeared.
It was dreadful to think like this, she scolded herself. Arthur was Micah’s father. She bit her lower lip.
Why then, was she not overjoyed at her husband’s return? How could she be so callous as to feel anger, resentment, even betrayal that she was once again subject to the control of a husband who had never made her feel as if she were beloved? Was she so deficient in moral character that she could not regard Arthur’s return as a gift from God so that her son would have his father with him?
She was a sinful woman, Tabitha told herself. She had allowed herself to fall in love—for there was no denying that she had succumbed to the bliss of being loved by a man who treasured her for who she was and did not see her as lacking in worth—with a kind, cheerful man who held her in high regard.
She watched as Arthur’s chest rose and fell with his breathing. His sleep was not restful; he turned against the sheets as if they confined him. Once, he raised his hand as if to defend himself against an assailant.
At some point in the night, she fell asleep in the chair, only to wake up when she heard Arthur’s voice call out.
“Tabitha!”
She awoke with a start. “What is it, Arthur? I am here.”
But he was calling out in his sleep and he did not hear her.
Curious, Tabitha leaned forward. His voice had sounded urgent, even desperate. But what sort of circumstance would
drive Arthur to call for her in such need? She knew very well that her self-sufficient, independent husband had no real need for her, beyond the basic functions which a wife provided. She had given him a son; therefore, her purpose had been served.
Why had he called for her? she wondered nonetheless. The riddle took over her thoughts and, tired though she was, she could not exorcise the question from her mind. Had something happened in the last four years that might have changed Arthur? Was he altered from the cold, insensitive man she had married? Was there something within him that regretted what he had done and who he had been?
He was mumbling in his sleep, but the syllables were muffled, and she could not understand what he was saying.
It probably didn’t matter, she reasoned. Arthur was not a man to surrender to weakness of any sort. He would return to his usual vigour and once he had proven that he was alive in the English court, he would be just as he had been before and she would be reduced to the docile and meek wife, subjugated by her superior husband’s temper and authority.
He would instil his forceful personality on shy, pleasant Micah, who so liked to please others and who was so gentle.
He would insist that the boy would need to learn to be a man and with that edict, Micah would be forced to please a man who could not ever be pleased, a father who would be demanding and forbidding. What would that do to her dear, affectionate son?
No! She would not allow Micah to be diminished by his father’s narrow views. She did not have to return to the subjugated state that she had known when she was a wife. Arthur’s return from the dead did not mean that it was her turn to entomb herself within the mausoleum of her husband’s controlling personality. She had learned much this summer and she had come to appreciate her own character. She was not silly or foolish or incompetent. She was a woman who had managed her resources well with frugality and economy. She had raised her son on her own and he was cheerful and thoughtful, with the sense of mischief that a young child ought to have but minus the malice that too often accompanied bad behaviour. It was no thanks to Arthur that Micah was the fine boy that he had become.