| |
Roderick had joined the others in the parlor during my absence. I could tell from his roguish smile and the way he was leaning over Mother’s tapestry that he was doing his best to charm her. Her ramrod-straight back and primmed-up mouth showed that she was having none of it. Probably she distrusted charming men on principle.
I could see at a glance, however, that my nieces were smitten. Each clung lovingly to one of his arms as they chattered away, their faces alight. One couldn’t blame them, of course.
At the sound of my footsteps, my mother looked up. “Well?” she challenged.
I hesitated. “This first meeting after all these years was bound to be a bit—well—fraught. I think I’d best give him some time to accustom his mind to me.”
“So that’s it, then? Ten minutes, and then you vanish just as you did before?”
“Why, no. Of course I mean to visit again. Tomorrow, if that’s agreeable. And if you should need me before then”—if Father worsened, I meant—“Roderick and I will be at the Langham Hotel.”
Her lips pressed together. “Oh, I see. Your own home isn’t good enough for you.”
“It isn’t my—of course it’s good enough.” It had never occurred to me that Roderick and I might lodge there, and the idea was not welcome. I did not want to be under the constant scrutiny of my family, lacking all privacy. But at the same time it would afford me greater opportunity to make peace with my family and might win some goodwill. I looked questioningly at Roderick, who shrugged the decision back to me.
“I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,” I began. “I should feel we were in the way. You seem to be a bit crowded, and—”
“We make do. Some of us aren’t above sharing beds.”
“Well, naturally Roderick and I would share.”
She drew herself up. “I’ll not have you bring your fancy man to sleep under my roof.”
I stared at her in indignation, but Roderick’s lips twitched. “I hate to disillusion you, Mrs. Ingersoll,” he said, “but your daughter and I are lawfully married.”
She did not look mollified. “And where did this so-called wedding take place?”
“In Paris.”
My mother sniffed. “I doubt those French clergymen know how to marry a couple properly. Why, next you’ll be telling me it was in one of those Roman Catholic churches.”
She made it sound like a fate worse than death. Before I could stop Roderick, he attempted to reassure her.
“It was in a registry office,” he said. “In France one needn’t have a church wedding at all. It makes things simpler.”
Now we were out of the frying pan and into the fire. My mother looked at him as if he had just casually admitted to drowning schoolgirls in the Thames.
“What kind of heathens think such a thing is proper?” she exclaimed. “I’ve never heard of anything so outlandish. That may suffice for foreigners, but I’m thankful to say that in this family we hold to a higher standard! If the two of you aren’t married in the eyes of the Church of England, you certainly aren’t in mine.”
Coming at the end of an emotionally taxing visit, this volley of scorn pricked my temper. “I’m afraid it isn’t up to you, Mother,” I said. “It’s the law.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she deliberately folded her arms. “Well, my fine miss, in this house I am the law, and I won’t have the two of you carrying on under my roof like some kind of—of—”
“Illicit lovers?” Roderick offered. I had the feeling he was enjoying this enormously. It probably suited him to be thought of as my scandalous paramour in a forbidden romance instead of something as staid as a decently wedded husband.
My mother was not amused. She had never had much of a sense of humor, I recalled, certainly not where morality was concerned. “You don’t seem to be taking this very seriously, Mr. Brooke. But you will not find lodgings here.”
That finally made an impression on him. “The devil you say!” When she puffed up in outrage, he added hastily, “I beg your pardon, ma’am. But it’s absurd to separate us. I can show you the marriage certificate if you wish.”
“Any piece of paper from foreign parts holds no water with me. Sally, if you’re going to stay, tell your fancy man to take his foreign ways out of my house.”
There was no point in arguing. “Come,” I said to Roderick. “I’ll see you out.”
Down the narrow staircase we descended, and I tried not to let my spirits descend as well. It was a losing battle.
“How was it seeing your father again?” Roderick asked.
“Difficult. I don’t think I feel like talking about it just yet.”
I was grateful when he didn’t press the issue. “Are you quite certain you don’t wish to come with me?” he asked instead. “I didn’t get the sense that your mother is going to make you feel at home.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll just stay a few days, speak to Father about Polly, and try to make some sort of peace with Mother. As for feeling at home...” I tried to smile. “You are my home, Roderick.”
With an exclamation he gathered me into his arms and held me tightly. “I wish that I could help you somehow,” he said in a different voice. “That you didn’t have to do this alone.”
I couldn’t have him worrying about me. “Just work on your concerto,” I said briskly, “and come and call on me tomorrow afternoon. We might even go for a drive.”
“I’ll hire a closed carriage so we can give free rein to our baser natures without anyone being the wiser.” His kiss was a promise of pleasure to come, but I was unable to enjoy it properly because of the giggling that broke out overhead. Looking up, we saw my nieces and nephew on the landing above, hanging over the rail and watching us. When I glared at them, they burst into laughter and ran.
“Definitely hire the closed carriage,” I said. “I’ve a feeling I shall be craving some privacy by then.”
When I returned upstairs, I found that my luggage had been deposited in the room occupied by Polly and my nieces, which was at the front of the house next to the sickroom. The little girls had already opened my trunk and were now nosing through my belongings. With great self-control I bit back a reprimand at the sight of them rooting through my intimate garments.
“Mr. Brooke is so very handsome!” Myrtle exclaimed, wrapping a sheer purple stocking around her throat like a muffler. “How did you meet? Was it love at first sight?”
That question put me in an awkward spot, because I could hardly say that on our first meeting he had gone so far as to proposition me, and I had slapped him in reply. But I was spared having to answer as Myrtle prattled on. “I should like to embroider some carpet slippers for him. What is his favorite color? I shall ask Mama for some money to buy the wool tomorrow.”
“His eyes are so beautiful!” Violet sighed. “He looks as though he must have a very romantic soul, like the poet Shelley. Does he like poetry? I shall write a sonnet for him. What rhymes with ‘Roderick’?” Then she held up one of my fanciest Parisian undergarments. “I’ve never seen a red satin corset before,” she said. “I must show Mama.”
“Better not,” I said hastily, retrieving it from her.
“Why?”
“Er... I’m planning to give her one just like it for Christmas, and I should hate for the surprise to be spoiled.”
The rest of the day was so busy that I had little time in which to reflect or feel sorry for myself. Mollie’s husband joined us for the evening meal. Jerome Notley was a well-spoken but quiet man with a brown beard and seemed unperturbed by my arrival. He let me and Mollie reminisce to our heart’s content, so I was able to learn more about our other siblings: Lallie, now in her early twenties and the companion to an elderly lady of good family, and the twins, Dick and Nick, now nearly twenty, who had both gone into the army. I could hardly believe that the children I remembered were now grown and moved away.
After the meal, my nieces inveigled me into turning the pages for them as they practiced duets at the piano. When Mollie decided it was the children’s bedtime, we had to go from room to room looking for Linden and finally found him behind a settee, having fallen asleep over a book. As Mollie had noted, the little fellow’s face was sadly marked from smallpox, but perhaps as he grew older the scars would fade.
“At least he isn’t a girl,” she said to me out of his hearing. “It’s so hard for disfigured girls to find husbands.”
Polly was in disgrace for having run off to Paris without a word to Mother, so she had been sent to bed without her supper—a particularly humiliating punishment for a young woman mere months away from her majority, and when I thought about how much I would have smarted under such a sentence, I resolved again to help her find a way to be independent.
But once the household settled down for the night and I squeezed into bed next to Myrtle and Violet, it was difficult to fight off depression. If my mother had not played on my feelings of guilt, I would at that moment have been lying in my husband’s embrace on smooth linens in a soft hotel bed, surrounded by luxury. Instead, a draft from the widow chilled my scalp, a bit of horsehair from the mattress was poking me in the side, and my two squirming, chattering nieces were preventing me from falling asleep.
It was more than physical discomfort that chafed me. I felt trapped, as if I were losing my independence and falling back under my parents’ command. Lying here, it might have been fifteen years ago, with me sharing a bed with Mollie and Lallie, as if my entire career and marriage had been nothing more than a dream.
There was also an annoying sound that kept drawing me back from sleep. A repeated sharp tap. After sitting up in bed and shushing the little girls, I decided it was coming from the window.
“What is it?” Polly asked, sitting up in her bed.
“Don’t get up,” I said. “I shall investigate.” A suspicion was forming in my mind, but I would feel foolish if I spoke it aloud and turned out to be mistaken. I drew the curtain aside just as the sound came again, and I jumped at the impact of the pebble on the windowpane. I opened the casement, standing to one side in case Roderick didn’t notice in time that the window was opening.
For it was indeed my husband, standing on the pavement below in the glow of a street lamp with a handful of pebbles, which he had been lobbing at the glass to waken me. The impetuous darling. I propped my elbows on the sill and laughed down at him. “What on earth are you doing?”
He grinned and kissed his hand to me. “What love can do that dares love attempt, et cetera,” he said. “I’m sure you know how the speech goes, Shakespearean that you are.”
“My ardent swain,” I said, marveling at having a husband who would carry out so flamboyant a gesture to bring me happiness. My heart lifted at this testament that I was not alone—or even for a moment forgotten.
At the same time, however, I must be mindful of the realities of our sublunary world. “This kind of demonstration in a public thoroughfare is very moving,” I said, “but I’m surprised a bobby hasn’t come along to speak to you about it.
His grin widened. “Oh, one has.”
A uniformed policeman stepped forward sheepishly from the shadows. “Evening, missus,” he said.
“Good Constable Wilkins said he might let the matter slide if he could catch a glimpse of the siren whose allurements drew me here,” Roderick explained. To the bobby he said, “Well, what do you think? Did I exaggerate her beauty?”
“She’s a right peach, sir, just as you said.”
“And isn’t it charming how the light from that gas lamp catches the gold in her hair? Not to mention how it brings out the red in her flannel nightgown.”
The bobby nodded. “Oh yes sir, very nice indeed. Quite a picture she looks.”
Having one’s beauty catalogued is always pleasant, but the circumstances were not ideal, and gooseflesh was rising on my skin. “Gentlemen,” I called, “can you ogle me with a bit more expediency? This night air is freezing.”
Roderick pretended to weigh my request. “So there’s no chance of your unfastening a button or two and giving us a glimpse of shoulder?”
“You’re fortunate that I don’t have any pebbles up here,” I said, “or I’d be pelting you.” But it was difficult even to pretend to be severe with him, and his answering grin was unrepentant.
“Don’t tell me your modesty is so easily offended.”
“Not mine, but I think the good constable is looking a trifle embarrassed.”
At that point I was jostled by Myrtle and Violet, who crowded into the window frame with me. “Is that Roderick?” demanded Violet, whose love was evidently so far advanced that she had progressed to using my husband’s first name.
“It is! It’s Roderick!” Myrtle waved frantically out the window. “Oh, my goodness, Violet, isn’t his dimple devastating? Mr. Brooke, up here! Here I am!”
Violet waved with even more vigor. “Roderick! It’s Violet! Did you come to see us?”
If they continued in this manner, one or both would fall out of the window. This would not break my heart, but it would cause a tiresome commotion. “Get back inside,” I commanded. “You can talk to Mr. Brooke tomorrow, when he comes to call. Now go back to bed.”
“Shan’t!”
“You can’t order us about! You aren’t our mother!”
Polly gave a loud groan, flopped back on her bed, and put her pillow over her head. “Will you all be quiet! I want to sleep!”
Violet and Myrtle were now kissing their hands at Roderick. I seized each by the wrist to prevent them from plummeting to their deaths, but they did not appreciate this tender consideration on my part and wriggled fiercely in an effort to shake me off. Jostled by their struggles, I considered whether my mother would blame me for instilling this unladylike behavior.
The bobby cast a furtive look up and down the street and tapped Roderick on the shoulder. “Sir, I think we’d best draw this to a close. I fancy the neighbors will be wondering what goes on.”
“Quite right, constable. Sybil, would you care to rendezvous with me in a more private setting?”
“I shall let you in at the kitchen door,” I said. “Girls, you are not to follow me, do you hear?”
“Why not?” Violet demanded, and Myrtle protested, “We want to see him too.”
Knowing little about girls of their age, I was uncertain whether it would revolt or fascinate them to say that my husband and I would probably be acting very loverlike. I settled for saying, “We shall be discussing dull, grown-up topics like bills and taxes—nothing that would interest you.”
Fortunately, that had the desired effect. When they subsided, exchanging looks of disgust, I took a candle to light my way and made my escape downstairs.
As soon as I drew the bolt and opened the kitchen door, Roderick slipped inside and took me in his arms. “I couldn’t just leave you in the lion’s den on your own,” he said. “You seemed so disheartened before.”
“I was,” I admitted. The security of his embrace was making that feeling recede, though.
His luminous eyes rested on my face with concern. “I don’t want to make you speak of it if you don’t wish to,” he said, “but is it because of your father?”
“Father, and all of it.”
“I’m so sorry. I’d hoped it wouldn’t be this painful for you.”
“Not painful, exactly, just... unsettling. After all these years, he is still unyielding. I had thought he might seem diminished somehow, as ill as he is, but he is implacable as ever.” I rested my head against his shoulder and let my eyes close. “I don’t know that coming here has made any difference.”
“Give it time,” he said softly. “As much as you like—we can remain here for as long as you need.”
“That’s too much to ask of you, Roderick. I can’t make you linger in London with nothing to do and no end in sight.”
“I’ve plenty of things to keep myself occupied. Besides, the romantic in me enjoys having to steal trysts together.” Taking me by the waist, he lifted me up and sat me on the kitchen table so that he might kiss me more conveniently. Various implements clattered noisily to the floor, and I thought I heard a mouse scamper away.
Perhaps it was just that I was preoccupied, but a damp, drafty kitchen was not very conducive to ardency as far as I was concerned. Honesty compelled me to say, “If trysting means such mundane and inconvenient surroundings as these, I’d rather be in a nice room at the Langham like a proper married couple.”
“How terribly practical you are,” he murmured against my cheek. “But that is part of your charm. Until I met you, I never thought of red flannel nightgowns as alluring. Now the sight of you in one never fails to quicken my pulses.”
That made me smile. “Red is the color of passion, after all.”
“I don’t think that’s why.” His hands reacquainted themselves with my body, and I sighed. “So soft,” he murmured.
“That is one virtue of flannel.”
He chuckled softly. “I wasn’t speaking of your nightgown.”
I drew his head down to kiss him. There was sorcery in Roderick’s lips, a delicious tantalizing warmth that somehow awoke every inch of my skin and sent languid heat through my limbs. I buried my hands in his curly hair, my earlier objections forgotten. With every moment that passed, I was less aware of our surroundings.
But alas, I was in no danger of forgetting them altogether. Somewhere behind us I heard whispers and scuffles, too loud this time to be mistaken for mice. Drat the girls!
“I think I hear eavesdroppers,” I said.
Roderick gave a short sigh. His cheeks were flushed with desire, one of his endearing traits. “Blasted girls... no, I don’t mean that. I suppose I’d best be off.”
I was not yet ready to relinquish him, though, and tightened my arms around him before he could move away. “Being parted from you is like having half my body torn away,” I whispered.
He smiled. “The thought of any harm coming to so beautiful a body is unbearable.”
“I’m serious.”
He placed a kiss on the end of my nose. “My Sybil, as much as I adore your taste for the dramatic, you are in no imminent peril. Need I remind you that you are the most independent of women and take great satisfaction in facing challenges on your own?”
“But you are my favorite challenge,” I grumbled, twisting one of his waistcoat buttons until, perhaps fearing I would pull it off completely, he placed his hand over mine.
“You always have a way out,” he reminded me. “At any moment you can walk out, summon a hansom, and join me at the Langham. Think of that. Nothing binds you here.”
Nothing but my own conscience, I thought. But I didn’t say it. I knew he didn’t mean to tempt me away from doing what I felt to be right. Rather, he offered solace in the reminder that I alone controlled my movements.
And it was comforting to think that if my mother’s sniping and my father’s severity grew too much to bear I could leave. I was my own woman, and independent. An advantage that I enjoyed while Polly did not—yet.
“That is a lovely thought,” I said. “Perhaps I’ll find it more bearable here to remember that it is only temporary.” I mused a bit. “Perhaps I should remind them it will encourage them to treat me with more consideration,” I added darkly.
Roderick lifted me down from the table but did not release me. “If they know what’s good for them, they will.” Raising his voice, he addressed the door that led to the stairs. “If your family doesn’t make you welcome, they will not see either of us again.”
Squeals of protest from the unseen nieces.
“Nooo! Roderick, you mustn’t go!”
“Stay! We’ll be good!”
“Ever so good!”
“You’ve not even heard us recite for you!”
Violet, fiercely to her sister: “I should be the one to recite for Roderick. You aren’t nearly as good as I.” Then she yelped. “I shall tell Mama you pulled my hair!”
“If you do, I shall tell her you were spying on Sybil!”
“But so are you!”
Myrtle, smugly: “But it was your idea.”
It seemed likely to go on indefinitely. I said grimly to Roderick, “This is why I don’t want children.”
He laughed. “I shall call tomorrow afternoon, as promised,” he said, for the benefit of all three of his listeners. “Like a proper visitor this time.”
“Bring some chocolates,” I suggested.
“Anything that will make you happy.”
“To bribe the girls into behaving, I mean.”
He drew me back into his arms for another kiss. “Now you’re thinking in terms of strategy. That’s my splendid Sybil.”
When I shut and bolted the door behind him, the kitchen felt sadly bleak once again. The excitement he always carried with him like an aura diminished, and my nieces evidently felt the same way, for they were quarrelsome as we made our way back upstairs to our room.
“I saw you kiss him!” Violet said accusingly, as if to imply that this was not my prerogative.
“That is the kind of thing spies are likely to see,” I said, but she either didn’t notice the criticism or didn’t understand it.
“You kept him all to yourself,” she protested.
Myrtle chimed in. “Yes, you are terribly selfish about him!”
I had reached the end of my patience. “Children,” I said in my deepest, most impressive stage voice, “it’s time you were in bed and asleep.”
Unfortunately, my Spanish Inquisition voice had no effect. “But I couldn’t possibly sleep now,” Violet protested. “Did you see how handsome he looked? And how he—”
Polly’s voice emerged from beneath her pillow in muffled wrath. “If you two sit up talking all night, I shall tell your mama, and she won’t allow you to see Mr. Brooke when he calls tomorrow.”
In five seconds the girls were in their bed and completely silent.
I blew out the candle and followed them, smiling even though they had left me just a small portion of the mattress. Roderick had to be the most thoughtful husband a woman ever had, between his unstinting support for my needs and his finding a way to visit me, however unconventionally. How fortunate I was to have such a perfectly harmonious marriage.
Except, I realized with a shock like cold water coursing through my limbs, that we had never explicitly agreed not to have children. And for me to have said I didn’t want any, out of a clear blue sky, might have been a shocking and unwelcome revelation.
Before we married, all we had said on the subject was that neither of us wanted children right away. We wanted to travel first, follow our careers and our hearts. But beyond that we had not discussed.
Granted, he had not acted as though my words had distressed him. He might have taken them as a joke, though, when I had meant them in earnest, albeit spoken flippantly. When I pictured our future, I did not envision children.
Having had to do so much of the rearing of my younger siblings before I left home, I had perhaps already satisfied any maternal impulses. When I had first been widowed and learned that I had a stepson, not knowing that he was a man full grown, I had been able to imagine myself contented enough in the role of stepmother during his holidays away from boarding school. But I did not think of myself as being well suited to motherhood in general.
Equally important, though, was how Roderick felt on the subject. And I knew now that we must not postpone the discussion any longer.