“We must speak of the children,” I said. My hand burrowed under his crisp nightshirt to play with the wisps of hair that led from his heart to his belly. “Lydia thinks I am a tyrant for refusing a dinner invitation from the Thompsons so soon after her grandmother’s death.”
“Lydia is bored,” Edmund said. “We should send her away. To your sister, Mary, perhaps, or to Lady Scott at Great Barr Hall. The Scotts see more society than us.”
“I doubt it,” I said, stiffening. “My cousin Catherine is an invalid.”
“But she is married to a baronet.”
All these years later and that still stung. It was Valentine’s Day 1815 in Bath, and I was my cousin Catherine’s bridesmaid. I’d held the train of her dress as she married Edward Scott, heir to his father’s baronetcy, a minor member of the nobility, but to me, the hero of a fairy tale.
He would have been mine had I only been older, I’d wept, wishing for a few more years on top of my fifteen. And now? Now I wished I could be Lydia Gisborne once more, uncrease the lines in my forehead, shrug off my worries and turn back the years as easily as I could wind back the clock on the mantelpiece.
“And then there’s Ned,” I said.
“Ned?”
“The new tutor, Mr. Brontë,” I said. “Ned seems to like him.”
My hand circled lower, scuttling spider-like across Edmund’s paunch.
“Lydia, that tickles,” he said, levering me off him as he sat up to blow out the candle. He rearranged the pillows and lay back, pulling my hand higher to rest on his chest.
This was it, then. Our conversation was at an end.
The darkness enveloped me. I imagined the trail of smoke snaking its way to the ceiling but couldn’t even discern the shape of Edmund’s chin. From the pattern of his breathing, I knew he was slipping away from me.
“Has Mr. Sewell said anything about him?” I asked, tapping Edmund like piano keys to bring him back to me.
“Hmm?”
“I wondered if Sewell had any complaints about his new companion.”
Mr. Brontë wasn’t sleeping in the Hall, but in the Monk’s House, where our steward, Tom Sewell, lived. I’d insisted, for the girls’ sake, that the young man’s sleeping quarters be far away rather than in the main house. And that was probably just as well, since his brooding brow and love of poetry marked Mr. Brontë out as a romantic.
It’s a strange little property, the Monk’s House. It dates from the 1600s, Edmund would tell visitors. Not nearly as old as the Hall, of course. It could have housed Henry the Eighth himself. And his chest would swell with pride.
The cottage was too grand for servants, to my mind, if you wanted the staff to know their place. No wonder Tom Sewell’s sister, our housekeeper, gave herself such airs. Miss Sewell was a flighty thing, too young to manage a household, and yet she thought herself mistress of two, whiling away evenings with her brother at the Monk’s House. No doubt she’d be there even more frequently now there was an unmarried gentleman to toy with.
I hadn’t even seen the new addition to the household since Mr. Brontë had hurled stones at the window. The schoolroom was the girls’ domain, and Ned was taking his lessons at the Monk’s House. The weather had proved too inclement for wandering outside or hunkering down in the stables.
“No, no complaints.” Edmund’s voice was just louder than a whisper.
To others, he was the stern father and the generous landowner, above all a man of morals and convictions. But to me, he was as vulnerable as a child, my partner through the years, my companion in the dark. Driven by an unexpected impulse, I kissed his neck, his cheek, his nose, like an explorer in the desert who has finally happened upon water.
He grunted.
“Edmund,” I said, lips skirting across his collarbone, hand reaching through the thicket of hair between his legs.
“Lydia,” he said, very much awake. He grabbed my hand and pushed it aside. “There’ll be none of that.” He turned onto his side, his face away from me, pitching up the sheets so a draft flew across my body.
I’d been a fool to attempt when it had been so long. That was a second cruelty—how our marriage had died along with our daughter. But I should have accepted it by now. Being with Edmund was like being in my own bed but lonelier. Having someone, but someone who did not want you, was worse than having nobody at all.
Edmund was asleep by the time I had conquered myself enough to excuse him. I wrapped my arm around him and he did not stir, brought my mouth close enough to his back to drink in his smell without risking a kiss.
All through the night, I stayed there on the brink of sleep, terrified to wake him, the cold playing across the goose bumps on my arm.
CHAPTER TWO
“DON’T YOU WISH TO hear about Mary too? She has made admirable progress,” Miss Brontë asked me, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
We were sitting in the bay of my dressing room window, looking out at the stew pond, which had frozen over in patches. A few more days of this cold, and Bessy would have her fondest wish: the children could go skating.
“There is little life in her. I fear she hasn’t the older girls’ character,” I said, watching my breath steam up the triangular panes of glass and cursing the interminable winter.
“Mary lacks Lydia and Bessy’s vitality, perhaps, madam,” said Miss Brontë, measuring every word and plucking at a loose thread on her shawl. “But she shows determination, a quiet resolve. It is hard for her, I think, to follow in her older sisters’ footsteps.”
This was more forthcoming than I usually found Miss Brontë. For years I’d longed for her to voice the opinions she was so ready with in her correspondence. To while away my tedium, yes, but also so I’d know I wasn’t the only woman in the house with a feeling heart and a fiery soul. But now it came to the rub, I wasn’t sure I liked it.
“Oh?” I said, tracing an “L” in the condensation.
“She hasn’t told me as much, but I feel it in her. I too am the youngest daughter—”
“Mary was not the youngest,” I cut Miss Brontë off and stood. How could she forget so soon? She who, with Marshall, had taken shifts at my darling’s bedside when I could no longer nurse her without rest.
“Of course not, Mrs. Robinson. I didn’t mean—I also lost—”
“Enough,” I said, choosing not to entertain her apologies.
There was judgment in her eyes. For her, my wealth, my grace, and my once handsome face spoke against me as surely as they had pled my case before all other courts. It was easy to paint herself as the victim—poor and young and plain—but life is rarely so simple.
Throughout the whole interview, I had steeled myself to ask her one question, yet now I could not bring myself to ask it. I walked to the polished wood table that served as my desk and flicked through condolence letters.
She started to leave, thinking she was dismissed.
“Miss Brontë?” I called after her.
“Mrs. Robinson?” she said, with something between a jump and a curtsy.
“Can you tell Mr. Brontë I wish to speak with him?”
A small crease appeared across her forehead, but she said, “Of course.”