SALT IN MY NOSE, sun in my eyes, and the wind whistling past my ears, loosening my hair and carving out sharp valleys in the sand. I had to fight against the thick folds of my dress to walk, as they flew back—black, billowing, warning of disaster as surely as the sails of Theseus’s ship.
There was a time when summering in Scarborough had been an escape. And now? In the week since we’d arrived, it had proved as bad as home. Worse, for here Mr. Brontë was with us at much closer quarters, and my mother-in-law was next door rather than at the safe distance provided by Green Hammerton Hall.
“Mama!” Mary cried, ahead of me, dancing sideways to avoid an incoming wave.
I squinted to make out her newly freckled face.
“It is Ned and Mr. Brontë,” she called. “I can see them.”
I could not. I had always struggled with my sight but was too vain to use eyeglasses to correct it. What’s more, with age, the sliver of world that was clear to me was narrowing. The foreground was now hazy too—the pages of my novels and the neat lines of my sister Mary’s letters as much of a blur as the muddled blue of the horizon.
“Go to them,” I told the daughter I’d named for my Mary, pausing to catch my breath. “And use your parasol. You will lose your complexion.”
Mary ran up the beach, without heeding how she looked. The lace-trimmed parasol bobbed uselessly behind her, as she dodged stray children, invalids, and a man leading a donkey. The beast’s head hung low. His gait was slow. I imagined staring into his tragic eyes.
“Pomfret cakes, madam, a halfpenny a bag.” I waved a seller aside, and he trundled on with his cart.
There was a sad lack of people worth knowing here this year, for all that the South Bay beach was so crowded. None of the Thompsons had traveled from Kirby Hall, out of respect to the grandmother who had finally quit this world not long after my mother-in-law’s predictions. And many of the other regulars had delayed their trips until August, although Edmund’s mother had insisted on July.
Yet Lydia and Bessy had still found a pair of girls their own age and station to giggle with, who provided the double advantages of plain faces and a fashionable married sister to play chaperone. Ned kept at his lessons and spent hours in the Rotunda Museum talking geology with Mr. Brontë. Miss Brontë used her moments of freedom to play with Flossy, a black-and-white terrier the girls had given her a month or so ago, or to visit St. Mary’s, the church in the old town, although on Sundays we attended services at Christ Church. And Edmund played escort to his mother, excusing me from sharing most of these duties.
So today I was alone, or as good as alone, with only Mary—the leftover child—who moped around, awkward to a fault as girls are when on the cusp of womanhood, although she seemed to have more energy today.
I couldn’t fight against the wind any longer so strode away from the water and sat where the sand was soft, fine, and dry. I didn’t bother to lay out my plaid but burrowed my hands deep and inspected how the light shone through the tiny crystals that gathered under my fingernails.
I didn’t look after Mary, afraid of meeting Mr. Brontë’s eyes as they walked toward me. I gazed instead at the Woods’ Lodgings on the Cliff, our home here for the next month.
I had hardly spoken to Mr. Brontë since that night in the Monk’s House three months ago, although I had studied the scene a thousand times, second-guessing my intentions, and his, and not knowing what I regretted more—going to his room, or the state I had found him in there.
For a week I’d been convinced that he would seek me out, apologize, and explain away what I had seen so that we could continue as before. Instead, he avoided speaking to me, or even looking at me, until I felt like a stranger at my own table. Miss Brontë and I both watched her brother raise his wineglass to his lips, again and again, as if competing over who could tally each sip.
“Edmund, darling,” I’d said one night, raking my fingers across his scalp on a rare occasion when he let me touch him. “I wonder if Mr. and Miss Brontë have become a little too accustomed to joining us for dinner?”
“Oh?” he said. “I thought they amused you.”
“Miss Brontë barely speaks, and Mr. Brontë may be losing his novelty,” I quipped. “But of course if you want them there…” I trailed off.
Edmund moved my hand to the other side of his head. “No, no. Whatever makes you happy, Lydia. Tell Miss Sewell we’ll dine with them once a fortnight.”
A laugh—Lydia’s most affected laugh—floated on the breeze. I couldn’t help but swivel to the cluster of clouds moving along the beach toward me. I’d let the children set aside their mourning, and so the girls and their friends were a riot of colorful ribbons, as uncoordinated as a circus tent.
I scrambled to my feet and shook off the sand. Lydia was framed by those silly and uncomely girls, while Mr. Brontë was walking between Bessy and the married sister, Mrs. Whatever-she-was-called. And Ned and Mary were running this way, racing to arrive first.
“There is a play tonight!” yelled Ned, coming within shouting distance. “With sword fights and a hunchback!”
“You mustn’t listen to Ned go on so. It is by Mr. Shakespeare,” said Mary with authority, when they stood almost breathless in front of me. She appeared to have lost her parasol during her short absence. “And it’s at the Theatre Royal.”
“I see,” I said, trying not to laugh at them.
“And Mrs.… Mrs.… Agnes’s and Bella’s sister has tickets and we must all go!” Ned ended on a flourish. “Oh, can we?”
I calculated. Edmund was accompanying his “dear Mama” to one of the Spa Saloon concerts tonight and, with the children and their keepers gone, I would be able to enjoy the Lodgings in solitude.
“Mr. Shakespeare, did you say, darlings?” I said, taking both children by the hands and walking them away from the others. “In that case, I have no objections.”
“OH, MARSHALL, I SHOULD have gone with them!” My desire to be alone forgotten, I paced the library, which was small and ill furnished compared to ours at home. I pressed my nose against the cold glass and struggled to see anything of the world beyond the window. The fabled view of the beach far below had faded.
“To the concert, madam?” Marshall said, still concentrating on the hem she was letting down on one of Mary’s petticoats.
“No, no, to the theater.” Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me to spend time with Edmund’s mother tonight.
I strode back and sat on the chaise beside Marshall, studying her expressionless face. She saw me, the real me, more than anyone else, yet wouldn’t give up this playacting. She was the servant, and I was the mistress. We had our parts and, with them, our corresponding lines and silences.
“Is that right, ma’am?” she said, after a long pause. “Well, mightn’t you have gone with them?”
“Yes, yes,” I snapped. “But that isn’t the point.”
She didn’t ask me to elucidate what the point was, but only because she knew that I would tell her anyway.
“Marshall?” I said, drawing so close to her that I blocked the light.
She dropped her needlework into her lap and looked up at me.
“Not one of them was anxious that I join them. Not one of them. It was all the same, either way. And isn’t that a slight? There was a time when I had invitations and friends, when parties weren’t complete without me. But now it’s ‘Bring your daughters, Mrs. Robinson,’ if anyone thinks to ask me anywhere at all. And not an ounce of gratitude from any of them, no respect for where they came from.”
There was only sympathy in Marshall’s eyes, although even to my own ears, my speech sounded petty. I laid my head on her shoulder and let her stroke my temple, feeling all the sorrier for myself that Ann Marshall was the only one who cared for me.
There was a knock at the door, and I sprang away from her, as if we were a young couple who’d been caught kissing.
“Come in,” I called, expecting William Allison or maybe Bob Pottage, our gardener who’d also come with us to Scarborough in the guise of a groom.
But it was Mr. Brontë.
“Mrs. Robinson.” Brontë addressed me for the first time in months and walked into the center of the room without waiting to be summoned closer. There was a confidence in his manner I hadn’t seen recently, a directness in his stare that made me think there had been a crisis.
“The theater—? Is all well?” I asked, drawing my hand to my chest. My breathing was shallow.
“All is well. We were one too many for our tickets, and I volunteered to step aside.”
I nodded, though my heart was still racing. “But why are you here?”
“I knew that Mr. Robinson—that you were also without company tonight. Both of you.” He added the caveat, with a nod toward Marshall, pulling us back from the brink of impropriety.
She resumed her sewing, gaze downcast.
I had no reason to doubt her absolute loyalty. My struggle was with my emotions regarding Mr. Brontë. The disgust I had felt that night at the Monk’s House fought against my joy that he had appeared and at that juncture when I had most longed for succor.
“I thought you might be in need of amusement,” he said. “Are you?”
But that wasn’t the question. The question was, Can you forgive me? And, Can we be as we were?
I swallowed my pride. Hadn’t I wanted to be sought out above others? And to learn more of Mr. Brontë and his dangerous, different mind?
“I am,” I whispered.
Mr. Brontë walked to the bookcase on the far wall and strained his arm to reach the upper shelf. I could see the muscles of his shoulder rippling, even through his shirt.
“I doubt they have much of a collection here,” I said. I had to say something, or they’d both hear how my caged heart rattled against my ribs.
“I think we should have some Shakespeare of our own. Don’t you, Mrs. Robinson?” he asked. He was already leafing through the pages, seeking out the play he had chosen.
What a refined and romantic form of entertainment! Was this how the Brontës spent their evenings, reading and debating great literature with each other? And Mr. Brontë thought me capable of this too.
“Marshall and I would be very grateful,” I said.
My maid bent even lower, as if trying to blend in with the furniture.
“Go on,” I whispered.
Mr. Brontë dragged an armchair from across the room to read by our solitary lamp. He sat, pushed back his curls, which had grown long enough to fall into his eyes, and positioned his feet so they were nearly touching mine.
“If music be the food of love, play on; / Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken, and so die.” He barely looked at the page, focusing instead on me.
I closed my eyes to avoid his gaze, picturing the characters, and letting his liquid words wash over me—rhythmic, warm, and inescapably earnest. My Illyria bore a striking resemblance to Scarborough, but the beaches there were clean and empty and the sea a dazzling turquoise, as still as a looking glass in the peace that followed the great storm.
At the end of the second scene, between Viola and the Captain, Mr. Brontë paused for breath.
Marshall poured the tea, which one of the local servants had brought in for us.
“I forget how visceral he is, how immediate,” said Mr. Brontë, turning back one of the almost translucent pages to study an earlier line. “My desires, like fell and cruel hounds, / E’er since pursue me. It is incredible to be pulled into the humanity of it, leaping off the page although centuries have passed.”
“You forget, I think, Mr. Brontë,” I said, my lip curling slightly, “that the Duke knows nothing of love. He is suffering under an infatuation, a boyish delusion.”
“What!” Mr. Brontë cried, with mock derision. “Who could question Orsino’s choice before he met his match in Viola? Would you deny that Rosaline was fair just because Juliet was fairer? You are a harsh critic of men, Mrs. Robinson, to demand their first affections, as well as their deepest.”
I opened my mouth to say something through my smile but my joy mingled with longing. The toe of his boot was now pressing against my slipper but I wanted him closer, and my hand in his yet again. Perhaps I could send Marshall away on some pretense, to bring sugar? But the door flew open, sending a vibration through the room that spilled tea from the cup I was holding into my saucer.
“Here she is, Edmund!” my mother-in-law cried. “Taking tea with the tutor.”
“And Marshall,” I protested, but my maid was already scuttling toward the side door.
“You didn’t go to the theater?” Edmund asked, undoing his cravat to dab at the perspiration that had gathered on his forehead from the walk up to our buildings.
His mother, damn her, looked unaffected from the exertion.
“I took one of my headaches,” I said, not trusting myself to glance in the direction of Mr. Brontë, who was standing to attention beside me, still holding the Works. “And Mr. Brontë was so good as to read to us. He was just leaving.”
“Leaving, nonsense!” Elizabeth Robinson boomed, taking the spot that Marshall had just vacated and spreading out her skirts so wide that I was wedged against the scroll at the foot of the bench. “Read on, Mr. Brent. I am sure this will be most educational.”
An expression of distaste passed over Mr. Brontë’s face as she butchered his name, but he nodded and reopened the volume on a random page.
“Go thy ways, Kate: / That man i’ the world who shall report he has / A better wife, let him in nought be trusted, / For speaking false in that,” he began to drone.
Old Mrs. Robinson stared at the tutor.
Edmund watched my reflection in the mirror above the mantel.
I nodded every now and then as if following the lines, although in truth, I no longer knew which play Mr. Brontë was reading from.
Whichever one it was, the drama was tedious and Mr. Brontë’s tone monotonous. It was as if he too had lost the import of what he was reading, as if the four of us would be stuck here forever, waiting to discover who would be the first to break.
The sound of the children’s raised and irritable voices was a relief. It was the sign I had been waiting for. I sprang to my feet and called them in from the hallway.
Miss Brontë looked tired, Lydia jubilant, Ned and Bessy ill-tempered, and Mary on the verge of tears.
“How was the play, my darlings?” I said, swooping in to kiss Ned’s rosy cheek.
“Mary took ill and insisted that we leave before the end, which is such a bore!” complained Bessy. “I wanted to see Richmond run his sword through the king.”
Ned mimed the action, invisible sword pointed at Miss Brontë’s abdomen.
“You are unwell, Mary?” I asked.
I was more surprised at Lydia’s even temper at being dragged away from an “occasion.” Her color was so high that her face matched her fuchsia dress and a smile was playing on her lips.
“I—” Mary began.
“Of course she is unwell, Lydia,” Edmund’s mother said. She, the only one who remained sitting, had lounged back even more so I could hardly see her behind her stiff, voluminous skirts. “Late nights! Theatricals! Miss Brent shouldn’t let the girls go on so, even if you are oblivious about how young ladies should be reared.”
“I am sorry, madam,” whispered Miss Brontë.
Her brother shot her a look of incredulity. “Brontë, Mrs. Robinson,” he said to Edmund’s mother, with a bow.
“I beg your pardon, sir?” she said, sitting up so that her head emerged once more.
“Our name is Brontë,” he said. “Not Brent.”
Everyone stared, waiting to see how Grandmama would react to such a challenge.
“Edmund!” she called, sticking out her hand. “Escort me to my rooms. I have had entertainment enough for this evening.”
Edmund helped her up from the chaise and offered her his arm.
Mary tried to whisper something to me, but her words were inaudible. I brushed her aside.
“And you!” my mother-in-law shot at Miss Brontë. “Get those children to bed!”
Miss Brontë inclined her head.
“Good night, Mr. Brontë,” I said, very deliberately, before Edmund and his mother were out of earshot, anxious that they hear him leave with the others, and still more scared of what I would do if he did not.
Mr. Brontë bowed and held the door for Lydia, as Ned and Bessy lined up to give me the expected kiss good night.
“Mama,” hissed Mary. “I must speak with you.”
“Mary,” I protested, the desire to be alone again overwhelming me in a sudden flood. I would take the Shakespeare to bed. Maybe Mr. Brontë and I could discuss the play in the morning.
“Please, Mama.”
The door clicked closed behind the tutor.
“Well, what is it?” I dragged Mr. Brontë’s chair back to its original position and, when I turned back, was surprised to find Mary crying. “My love?” I pinched her chin and teased her face toward mine.
“Mama, I’m frightened,” I made out between her sobs.
“Whatever is the matter?” I asked, my heart beating a little faster, thinking of Georgiana and how she’d said she was afraid to journey to heaven alone.
“I’m—I’m—” Her voice dropped even lower. “Between my legs. I’m bleeding.”
I dropped her chin, laughed, and gave her shoulder a quick (I hoped comforting) squeeze.
Mary’s expression fluctuated with confusion.
“Is that all?” I asked. “Mary, you are a goose. There is no need to be frightened. I thought the other girls would have told you? Or Miss Brontë? But no matter. I’ll have Marshall bring you rags.”
I walked over to pull the bell cord.
“I’m not dying?” Mary stuttered, clenching and unclenching her fist at her side.
“No, no,” I said, beckoning over Marshall, who was hovering at the door. “But I’m far too tired to teach you anything tonight. Marshall here will see to the soaking of your things.”