The old heaviness returned, as soon as London lay before me again. Smoky, soot-streaked, hot. The old unease. What would happen now? For two days, I’d been back to wondering, thinking the affection between us was a thing I had dreamed. I was her maid again. Nothing more. Benham was always at her side, or one of the other ladies. I’d brought her plates filled with fruit or pastries, which she took without saying a word. I’d fetched her shawl. Carried her picnic basket when she joined Hep Elliot beside the lake.
The horses strained as they pulled towards Levenhall. Benham blinked, turned towards her, took her hand in his. ‘You and Frances are quiet with each other, my dear. Have you had a contretemps?’
She glanced over at me. ‘Not at all. I am sure we are all simply tired.’
He called across the carriage, ‘Quite a treat for you, girl, wasn’t it?’
I looked at her. The feeling of my nipple in her mouth was like a thorn inside me.
‘It was, sir,’ I said. ‘Quite a treat.’
She gave a small shake of her head, like someone jolted out of sleep.
A cold, sour feeling pressed into me as I watched them, and then I was the one who had to turn away, when he lifted her hands and pressed his lips to her knuckles and called her his dear.
At Longreach, he’d been full of a play-actor’s cheer, his smile greasy and slick, his voice loud and self-satisfied. ‘Meg!’ he’d shout to her. ‘Somebody you must meet.’ And she’d go over to him, dutiful, every time, the smile hemmed tight between her cheeks. One afternoon, I’d overheard one of the ladies say: Open doors will improve any marriage; only truly happy marriages survive closed ones.
Now he held her hand over his lap and pressed each of her fingers, like piano keys. All the while his eyes sneaked towards me, and I thought he must surely know what had happened between us. The way he fluttered her fingers, like flags. Her face was pale. At finding herself so close to him? Or was it me? With her free hand, she plucked at her skirt. I stared and stared, wondering what she was thinking.
‘Do you know, Meg?’ He twitched their joined fingers across his lap. ‘Some of the westerly farms have been allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair . . . I had another word with Percy, told him it’s high time he undertook a programme of improvements. Told him the tenants will work much more productively for a benevolent master than a neglectful one.’
There can be no such thing as a benevolent master, I thought. I laced my hands together in my lap, and bit my tongue, thinking perhaps I’d tell him so when he next called me to the library.
She glanced up. ‘Is that right, Mr Benham? Well, that is a wonder.’
He gave her a tap on the wrist. ‘Not a wonder, my love.’ He shook his head, laughed. ‘You meant to say wonderful, of course . . . That’s wonderful.’
‘Yes.’ She drew her hand back into her own lap.
Mr Casterwick snored beside me, legs poking out like tent poles.
I watched, and waited. I wanted her to look up at me, but she kept her eyes down.
Benham called her up to his library as soon as we came through the doors, saying he wished to speak to her alone. I stood to watch them go, Charles hefting their bags ahead. Then I turned slowly and followed Mr Casterwick downstairs. Cold chicken and boiled potatoes had been left out for us and Mr Casterwick set his portmanteau under the table. Pru asked him about the party and I heard him telling her about the new periwinkle livery Lady Catherine had got from Harper’s in March, and the fireworks, and the rows of ham hocks in the basement where the visiting valets had slept, how the smell had given him dreams of being smothered by dirty stockings. Linux busied herself clearing away the tea things, and asked him if he’d noticed whether the Longreach housekeeper used dried fruit in her stuffing. But she watched me all the while.
Mr Casterwick had been given a slice of lemon cake, by the Longreach cook, to give to her, and when he got up to fish for it in his bag, she turned to me, lips small as pin-tuck seams. ‘Homer is missing.’
I frowned. ‘Who?’
‘The cat. The cat. The cat is missing.’
A laugh cracked out of me. It went on and on. I couldn’t stop it.
The scrape of my chair made Pru whip up her head.
‘Are you accusing me of something to do with the cat, Mrs Linux?’ I said. She pinched her lips tighter. ‘You think I took him? I have been miles and miles away!’
‘How would I know the machinery of heathen business? What I do know is that when you sup with the Devil, you’re best to bring a long spoon.’
I stepped back. ‘I haven’t taken the cat, Mrs Linux. I haven’t eaten him. Nor do I have his bones. If you believe I have, you must take that up with Mr Benham.’
She tipped her head. The buttons of her grey dress stared at me, like hard little eyes. ‘Going, are you?’ she said. ‘Upstairs? Yes. Flee. Fly! Flee to her!’ Her voice followed me, louder and louder. ‘There’s no salvation for you up there! No good thinking there will be.’
Shadows fell across the walls and the bedclothes. It was getting dark, too warm for fires. Books stood sentry in the dim light. On the shelves around the room, on the mantel, on the floor. A line of them, leading to her. I stood clumsy at the door, closed it, and kept my hand behind me on the latch. She was at her desk, and rose when I came in. All was quiet. How long did we stand thus? Long enough to see she was herself again. I watched the little dip in her throat when she swallowed. She laughed. ‘I thought surely you would be frightened of me, after . . .’
She stopped, curved her hands around her waist, as if she were cold. My heart thumped against my ribs.
‘I have been sitting here for several minutes, pretending to write, wondering all this time –’
Oh! The wild shock when I pulled her to me, like that first time I tasted ice. The little bird bones in her shoulders and her neck. I remember how I dipped my head, how we kissed, how she reached up to cover my hands with hers, pulled her head back, laughing.
My head felt so hot and so light I had to press my hands to it. She came against me, solid and warm. I felt her sliding, and then she was on her knees. I felt my own hands in her hair, her hands closing around my waist, and there was a cold fire in every inch of my skin. My eyes flew open, but I saw nothing, only dark. I felt her still. Her fingers dug sharp into my hips and I felt her breath, and when she lifted her head and smiled up at me her lips were shining too.
‘Fran.’ She whispered it against my thigh. ‘Fran.’
When I raised my head, the mirror was before me and I saw myself in it, clutching her head to my waist. There we were. My face, the back of her head, her knees. The whole room hung askew; only the glass was centred.
I looked down. ‘I suppose I’m your secret now.’
She laughed and pulled me to her.
Later she went over to the door and put her ear against it. Then she fitted the key to the latch and I lit a candle and she took me by the hand and led me to the bed.
‘Will we do that again?’ I asked.
Her laugh tunnelled under my skin. ‘It is all I have wanted since the first day.’
‘On the steps?’
‘On your knees! In soap. Even then. I never saw anybody like you. When we first came here, there were these almond macarons my maman would buy, when we had money . . . She found a French baker, near Spitalfields. You remind me of those . . . you . . . your skin.’ She bent to nip at my ear. ‘I wanted to see you. You must have known, surely, when I came to the kitchen that night?’
Her words slowed my thoughts to molasses.
She smoothed a hand over my ribs. ‘Just think. You are scribing my confessions, and now my body comes also under your spell. You will know me, body and soul, n’est-ce pas? Though self-revelation is never pretty . . . Richelieu said all he needed was six lines in any honest man’s hand, and he could find something in them to hang him with . . .’
I felt the blood moving through me. I felt swollen with it. I looked at her. ‘I don’t believe there’s any such thing as an honest man.’
Life is a brief candle but love is a craving for time. Therefore, I was already cursed to want what I couldn’t have. What I wanted was to learn her inch by inch. To read her like a book that wouldn’t end. I lay beside her, watching the small waves of her breath against the sheet, lashes thick with sleep.
Just before she slept, she’d asked me to move my pallet to her room for good: ‘Many ladies do the same with their maids! Had this house been properly designed, there would already be a maid’s bedroom over there, where the dressing room is. You could bring your pallet here.’
I turned and turned, and my mind turned also. I lay awake until I heard the first stirrings of the house, the screeches of doors that needed oiling, and Benham’s bell from his library below us. He’d be wanting tea, and kippers and coddled eggs, Pru would be up to start the sweeping, Linux would be running her hand along the banisters, making sure Levenhall gleamed, as it always did. The world cannot be kept long at bay.
I had said yes. But had I been answering as lover or maid?
‘Where would I sleep?’ I’d asked.
Towards the end, Phibbah had slept nights with Miss-bella, at the foot of her bed. Oh, Phibbah. What would she say now? I could almost hear her, laughing.
You go on thinking this white woman for you. None of them can be for us. All ducks don’t dabble in the same hole.