William sighed. “Her name was—is—Zelda.”
“Zelda!” Peter smashed his hand across the bar, making several of the pints around them quake. “That’s right. How could I forget? She must have been pining after you all these years. Never married?”
“Never,” William said. “My mother has made it a part of her mission to update me on Zelda’s goings-on with every single letter. What was it she said recently? ‘Zelda, of course, looks forward to your arrival home. I spotted her at the market. Although she’s 28 years old, she’s still just as stellar-looking as the day you left. Remarkable that she saved herself for you.’”
“I told you! She must have been aching to make you her husband …” Peter said.
“I’m not so sure,” William said. His heart thudded dully. “I haven’t received many letters from her, not since those first few years. We couldn’t keep it alive.”
“You blame her for keeping you here for eleven years, then?” Peter said, giving him a sneaky smile. “If only she would have called to you, told you that she couldn’t live without you—”
“It’s not like that,” William said.
In fact, William had given very little thought to Zelda over the years. When he’d been 16, 17 years old, he’d thought Zelda to be a blissful, angelic light in his life, potentially his future: a soft and humble woman, who looked at him as though he could give her the entire world. Once, just before he’d left for Glasgow, she’d fallen from her horse on the moor. He still remembered lifting her onto his horse, feeling her limp frame in his arms, watching her face contort with pain. He told himself he could care for her, that he could always be enough for her.
And yet, he’d still found reason to leave. He’d still felt that she wasn’t enough. Not when the entire world needed some kind of saving.
That memory was so strange, now. William could feel the echo of the others around him on that fateful day. Harriet—the young, spitfire girl alongside him. She’d gazed at him with almost impenetrable eyes, watching as he’d slipped Zelda over the horse. Something about that look had captivated him, although he wasn’t sure why. She seemed to have this inner anger.
Something about it had always seemed like a mirror to whatever swirling chaos lurked within William himself.
He’d never been able to name it.
But now, of course, he shoved all thoughts of Harriet away—reminding himself that these creatures were just ghosts from the past.
“Tell me, William,” Peter said. He ordered them another round of drinks with a flick of two of his fingers towards the bartender. “Tell me that you’re not going to just slip back into old London habits once you arrive. You have everything there. You’re a LORD there, for goodness sake. Why would you busy yourself with the terrors of the world when someone is going to pour your tea every day at three? Why would you think for a moment about poverty when you have a beautiful wife, willing and eager to deliver you children? If you were smart—which I know you’re not—you would allow yourself to fall into that bliss completely.”
“I can’t,” William murmured, his head growing heavy already with drink. “I’ve come too far. I’ve learned too much. It’s not that I don’t think of Zelda with fondness. But it’s the same as you think of your old, tired childhood memories. They’re drenched in sunlight. But are they actually real?”
Peter slapped his hand across William’s shoulders, making him quake. His eyes were difficult to read, almost glossy with emotion. They’d never shown such outward fondness for one another. It simply wasn’t in-line with their masculine ways.
“I will miss you around here, William.” Peter sighed. “Even if it is always doom and gloom with you.”
William and Peter drank themselves silly that night, knowing it would be the final time. When William retreated to his bed that early morning, he collapsed, still fully clothed, and drifted into a kind of half-sleep, one foggy with nightmares.
In them, he dove through a chaotic and charged London, one awash with evil. He hadn’t the tools to make change, not in the way he so wished. And he found himself crumpled on the steps of a church, praying to the sky above for a solution that would never come.
When he awoke, he still wasn’t sure he was making the proper decision. But he knew he had nothing left to do but press forward.
Chapter 5
Tea with cousins. Harriet prayed the ritual would drag her mind from its self-created chaos. Socialising—it was the way of the London woman, something one was meant to do to uphold inner peace, or just social standing.
It was difficult to remind herself of this, especially after a night of raucous nightmares. She couldn’t draw the image of the beggar woman from her mind.
And she didn’t imagine that tea with biscuits would assist it in any manner. But she hadn’t another way to fill the day, especially as she found it difficult to speak with her mother after their previous conversation.
She donned a light pink frock and slipped out into the rain of the late-April afternoon, leaping into the carriage and greeting the stable boy, perched at the top. The stable boy grunted his greeting, seemingly begrudging the fact that he had to leave his warm little shelter, his seat on the hay in the stables. Harriet tried to drum up an apology, realising that her selfish act of wanting to visit Renata and Zelda had, in turn, muddied his afternoon. Perhaps this was what her parents had meant the previous night. That nothing in the world could be done for good without creating some kind of darkness.
Renata and Zelda had been Harriet’s closest friends since she was a girl. Renata was a year younger than Harriet, while Zelda was several years older, yet still unmarried. The familiar, sombre butler, with his sagging grey cheeks, greeted Harriet at the door and led her to the tea room, past the staggering ballroom, through the cavernous hallways, and then into the glowing back of the house, with enormous windows that still brought in light, despite the grey of the day.
Zelda was perched in the corner chair with her eyes on the moor. In recent months, she’d grown increasingly reticent, her blonde hair taking on a sort of lacklustre, dry quality. At 28 years old, she still looked every bit as beautiful as she had as a younger woman, yet it seemed she drew breath less frequently, didn’t curve her lips into much of a smile.
“Zelda?” Harriet tried from the doorway, feeling her brows lower on her forehead. “Are you quite all right?”
Zelda turned her head and batted her lashes, looking like a wild animal that had just been discovered in the woods. She sanded her hands across her gown. Harriet hated that sometimes, she thought the very same as her mother did—wondering why on earth Zelda wasn’t married yet.
Sometimes, she wondered if it was because her long-lost love, William Abernale, had disappeared 11 years before—trudging up north and abandoning their general unspoken agreement regarding their future together. Would she ever get over that love?
“There she is!” Renata whirled in from the side room, dropping her stitching on a corner table and placing a kiss across Harriet’s cheek. She beamed, and her wild blonde curls quaked around her, looking like little springs. “Harriet, you’re looking lovely. Just lovely!”
“You’re chipper today,” Harriet said, giving her a crooked grin.
“Ignore her. She’s just falling in love.” Zelda sighed.
At this, Zelda’s eyes fell back in their sockets. She clapped her palms together and turned to the window, looking girlish and eager.
“So that’s why you wanted me to come over,” Harriet said. “To tell me wild tales of your romantic life.”
“You say it with such sarcasm, Harriet!” Renata sighed, her shoulders drooping.
“No, no.” Harriet swept forward and allowed herself to be hugged in the soft folds of the light yellow cushion of the couch beneath the window. Seconds later, a maid appeared, dropping a platter of tea upon the low-level wooden table there between Zelda, Renata, and Harriet.
Harriet remembered now that when she’d been a child, she’d rushed thro
ugh this very room, fumbled, and smashed her head into the corner of the table. Bright-red blood had trickled down her cheek. Her mother had held her little hand in hers, whispering to her. Telling her if she focused on something else, the pain would deplete. Eventually, it had.
“Who is this man, then?” Harriet asked, cupping her tea. She eyed the biscuits on the platter, the crumbs that swirled across the china.
Renata reached for two and stuffed one in her mouth, chewing quickly. Zelda sipped her tea without eating. Both girls were trim, stunning creatures, but Renata had the tendency to live wilder, to speak quicker, to eat and eat and eat. It was the very essence of vitality.
“His name is Lord Hayward Pennbrooke,” she said.
“Oh! Of course.” Harriet nodded. “I’ve heard of him.”
In fact, she’d met the man at a ball perhaps three years before. He was a bit short, a bit squat, with eager little eyes that she’d felt, at the time, tried a bit too hard to peer into her soul.
“He had an enormous laugh,” she tried now, remembering it echoing off the walls.
“It’s divine, isn’t it?” Renata sighed. Now, she shoved another biscuit between her lips and chewed a bit slower, as though she was caught in a memory.
Zelda cast her eyes to the ground.
“Has there been discussion of marriage?” Harriet asked, unsure of where to take the conversation. She felt she was operating off-script.
“Oh? Marriage? We’ve only just …” Renata began, her words quickening.
“I’ve been their chaperone a few times,” Zelda offered, looking contemplative. “Truth be told, our darling chatty Renata here is always a bit too nervous to be her stellar self throughout these encounters. Aren’t you?”
“It’s not such a struggle …” Renata tried, the light draining from her cheeks. “He understands me, I think. It’s a—a relationship without that sort of language.”
Harriet scrunched her nose a bit. She hated that Zelda had revealed this insecurity in Renata’s life, although she knew this was the nature of sisters—to pick and prod at one another until the other went wild.
“I really do think we’re heading in a sort of direction,” Renata tried now, sweeping her blonde curls behind her ears. “It’s something I can feel in my gut. A woman has intuition. We’re told that from a young age.”
“Absolutely,” Harriet offered, hoping her voice seemed filled with the promise Renata was looking for. “If you feel something—something true—you have only to go towards it.”
“Yes.” Renata tapped her empty teacup onto the platter and stared at it, her eyes glossy.
“And what of you, Zelda?” Harriet asked, feeling as though the conversation’s weight had been placed on her shoulders, if only because she was the neutral party. “Any courting news?”
Zelda’s face remained stoic. Immediately, Harriet felt awash with regret. Why was it so difficult for her to read the current situation? Renata thrust her hand across her sister’s thigh and jiggled her gown, giggling.
“She’s just too terribly shy to announce what’s happening,” Renata said.
“What do you mean?” Harriet asked. She recognised only a half-interest within herself.
“Well. You must remember that terribly handsome man. William. William Abernale,” Renata said, her voice growing hushed.
Harriet did. For whatever reason, now, she felt a once-familiar stroke of jealousy. It curled around her belly, tugged at her throat. She lent them both an eager smile and said, “Of course. London hasn’t been the same since William Abernale left us all behind.”
“He wrote to say he’s returning,” Zelda said, seeming unable to make any sort of eye contact.
“That’s marvellous!” Harriet tried, although she felt the lacklustre nature of her own words. “He’s returning from Glasgow? He’s graduated?”
“He remained there after graduation,” Renata said. “What was it he said, Zelda? He felt there was so much to do in Glasgow. So much to fix. And now, he feels called to return to London. I suppose he thinks he can fix London, as if there’s anything wrong with it. We aren’t like the wild people up north. We’re civilised. I’m sure that will be a shock to him.”
“Actually …” Harriet began, yearning, suddenly, to tear through the story of the previous afternoon, describe in detail what she’d seen. But just as soon as she’d begun, she thought better of it and shoved her teeth over her tongue, drawing blood.
“Well, I think it’s silly that he left his good social standing here for so long,” Renata said, ignoring Harriet’s hesitation. “He could have had Zelda years ago. The two of you might have already had a family. Imagine it!”
“All for a cause that was never his …” Zelda murmured, her words hollow. She turned her eyes to her hands and flashed the palms towards her face. Still, she seemed unable to fully engage either her sister or her cousin, as though the pain of truthful conversation was far too much.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say that the cause wasn’t his,” Harriet heard herself say.
“What do you mean?” Renata asked. Her face scrunched up with confusion.
“It’s only just. Well.” Harriet felt her thoughts swirl around themselves, tying into knots. “The trouble in Glasgow is very similar to the trouble we have here in London. I’m sure the sort of work he did there was completely essential to—to the bettering of mankind. It’s not as though he just went up there and messed around for eleven years. That’s an entire lifetime. Can you imagine the lives he touched? Can you imagine how much good he’s done, when compared to us? We’ve been doing almost exactly this since he left.”
Zelda shifted in her seat. All the colour had drained from her cheeks. Renata clucked her tongue and then stabbed another biscuit between her lips. Harriet sensed she’d snuck over whatever barrier had been set in their conversation. Her stomach bubbled with panic.
“You really think he was up there saving some Scottish person’s life?” Renata asked, almost snorting. “When he could have been here—at our celebrations, our dinner parties, our Christmases?”
“Life isn’t all about the parties we have,” Harriet murmured. Her hand shook as she lifted a cup of tea to her lips and sipped it. How had she driven so far into the depths of this conversation? “Anyway, you must be thrilled that he’s returning, Zelda. I’m sure the two of you will have so much to catch up on. He must be thrilled that you haven’t yet married …”
Zelda cleared her throat. Renata peered at her sister with an intense curiosity. After a moment, Zelda rose to her feet and walked slowly to the edge of the room, before disappearing into the hallway. Renata leaned tighter towards Harriet, speaking in a low whisper.
“She’s been this way ever since she learned of William’s return,” she said. “It’s as though she thinks she’s supposed to be happy about it, yet isn’t. I can’t understand. She and William fancied one another so greatly! It’s as though she wishes he would remain in Glasgow, so she can carry on with her lonely existence. I think one can grow accustomed to anything, and she has, quite frankly, fallen in love with her own silence.”
“That’s rather rash to say,” Harriet tried.
“I’m very serious,” Renata said. “Especially now that Marcus has married, our parents have taken their eyes away from Zelda’s marriage propositions and busied themselves with other things. As long as Marcus carried forward the family line …”
“Hmm.”
Harriet forced herself to eat another biscuit and then drummed up an excuse to depart. Once in the hallway, she couldn’t find any sign of Zelda whatsoever, and asked Renata to bid her adieu. Of course, she would soon see them for the upcoming ball at the Marquess’s estate, an event that ordinarily cued the beginning of the grand social affairs of the late spring and summer in London.
A Ravishing Beauty in Disguise: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 4