But sometimes, maybe only once or twice a night, Mr. Brontë’s gaze would slide to meet mine and we’d engage—I thought so, at least—in a shy and silent conversation. After dinner, we would all retire to the anteroom. Once the girls had finished bashing out their simple tunes or squabbling over cards and bagatelle, I’d take to the piano and sing and play—with skill, yes, but also with all the feeling I had in me. Maybe Mr. Brontë knew what each note contained, maybe he did not, but the possibility raised the temperature in the room and fizzed like a firefly through the air.
“My children, unlike yours, Mrs. Robinson, did not have a mother to guide them,” the Reverend Brontë continued, shaking his head as the Irish do when they speak of death.
My smile became forced at the reminder that we were the parents at the table and Mr. Brontë one of his father’s children.
“When my poor wife was taken from us—and Anne just an infant!—I reared them as I knew how, with the help of books and my late wife’s sister. But in some ways, they were raised by the moors around Haworth, our home. It is another world out there. Just steps from our parsonage, you escape the town and the smoking chimneys. The house itself disappears from view. Instead, there are rolling hills and hidden waterfalls. Miles without fences and only the occasional rock to sit on, thick purple heather you trample underfoot or make your rustic daybed. Now that she’s alone, with Charlotte teaching in Brussels and her other siblings here, my daughter Emily vanishes for hours and comes back with her eyes clouded over with bracken and burrs in her hair. You’d take her for a gypsy.”
Emily—so this must be the third sister.
“In such a place it is unsurprising that my children grew up in worlds of their own imaginations,” he went on. “As youngsters, they astounded me with their tales of far-off lands, their writings, and their art. Did you know they created books and magazines in miniature, as if scribed by fairy hands?”
I had not known this. But I’d seen the letters Miss Brontë sent and received, and how the cursive raced over the page in tightly coiled lines, as if the pages could hardly contain the writer’s confidences.
“Father,” Miss Brontë said, reaching out to touch his arm in a gesture that conveyed in equal parts her affection and her desire that he change the subject.
But I wanted him to keep talking, to speak specifically of Branwell and, most of all, of Charlotte. Alone, and in Brussels! I’d only ever been abroad on my honeymoon.
The Reverend patted Miss Brontë’s hand. “My Anne needn’t worry,” he said, turning back to me. “I know few of my children’s secrets. My daughters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—squirrel away as if preparing for winter and don’t think to inform me of their plans. But when you trust your children, it warms your heart to see them conspire. Isn’t that so, Mr. Robinson?”
I couldn’t think of my children in the plural. They had inherited only the worst of each of us—Bessy and Ned Edmund’s love of horses and hunting, Mary his avoidance of conflict, Lydia my vanity. And, worse, unlike these talented Brontës, they didn’t possess an artistic bone among them. Only little Georgie had. She’d told fantastic stories that Edmund deemed lies and invited me, and only me, to watch her plays and join her at her reverent, imagined tea parties.
Edmund laughed. “There is little occasion for secrets here at Thorp Green Hall.”
My stomach clenched. My heart held its own secrets. And Bessy’s valentine was only the start. Soon my remaining girls would deceive me, resist me, leave me.
“No secrets,” said Mr. Brontë, raising his glass, “unless it is the secret of how to manage such a happy household, which Mrs. Robinson holds close to her chest.”
The men laughed.
Miss Brontë frowned at her brother as he refilled his wine without waiting for a servant.
I blushed, not at the compliment—they never bothered me—but at the admiring glance that accompanied Mr. Brontë’s reference to my chest.
“To Mrs. Robinson!” he toasted.
The party drank.
Edmund beamed at me.
I smiled down at my plate.
There was a knock on the dining room door, and Marshall interrupted our festivities, bobbing awkwardly and looking in my direction.
“Excuse me.” I rose.
The men did too as I hurried past them.
“Is anything the matter?” I asked her, once we were in the cool hallway.
“It is Master Ned, ma’am. I am so sorry to have come for you,” Marshall said, her pockmarked face earnest and a little fearful. “But he woke up screaming and wouldn’t be comforted.”
“Thank you, Marshall. You were quite right. I’ll go to him.”
I ran up the stairs, longing to be back in the dining room but not having it in my heart to be angry, as I would have been had the summons been from one of the girls. I’d almost expected Lydia to stoop to dramatics to spoil my evening, but this was unlike Ned.
He’d drawn his blankets up to his throat and was shivering when I entered his room, although he had a bed warmer and a fair fire.
“Ned, darling,” I said, taking his small damp body in my arms. “You are far too old for nightmares. You know they aren’t real.” I stroked his hair, imagining the scene two floors below, the meal drawing to its conclusion without me.
“It wasn’t a nightmare,” said Ned, burrowing his head against my breasts. I hoped his tears wouldn’t stain my neckline.
“Then what is it?” I asked, pushing his forelock from his eyes.
He paused. “It’s a secret—” he muttered.
“What kind of secret?”
If Lydia and Bessy had been tormenting him again, those girls wouldn’t dine with us but would have only bread and butter, for a week.
“A secret about Mr. Brontë,” Ned whispered. “I saw him, and he was different.”
“Different? Different how?” I held him by both shoulders and looked square at his snot-covered face.
“I don’t know. Different. Angry.” He sniffed. “It was the other night, after supper. I went to the Monk’s House—”
“You went to the Monk’s House at nighttime, Ned?” I said, my voice a little sterner.
He looked down and nodded.
“Then no wonder Mr. Brontë was angry.”
“But—”
“No ‘buts,’ ” I said, running my hand down his cheek. “You mustn’t leave the Hall by yourself and a boy your age mustn’t cry so. What would your papa think?”
I stood to leave but felt a twinge of guilt at his woebegone expression.
“There.” I bestowed a kiss on his forehead. “Now sleep.”
Marshall was waiting outside his room, so I instructed her to stay with him.
I padded down one flight of stairs and was just about to round the corner to descend the next when hushed voices emanated from the hall below.
I paused, registering the Reverend Brontë’s low growl and the soft timbre of Miss Brontë’s voice.
“The seclusion here is what Branwell needs,” said the father. “The temptation is too much for him in Haworth, what with the Black Bull just around the corner from the parsonage. I hope he will prove worthy of the trust we have all placed in him. I don’t want a repetition of what happened at the railway.”