He points at a small table where several ornately framed photographs are displayed. When I pause, uncertain, he lifts one and passes it to me.
I lift the picture into the light and—
“Oh!” I say.
I expected some dour-faced formal portrait. There’s always a misunderstanding that Victorians didn’t smile for photographs, when the truth is that the process took so long that attempting a smile would result in a blurred face. A serious pose was less likely to show the distortion of movement. Yet while the subjects in this picture aren’t exactly grinning, they exude a joy brighter than any hundred-watt smile.
It’s Rosalind and August, when they’d been courting. She’d owned a bakery in London, quite a scandalous thing for a young single woman, especially one of her good breeding. But she’d been the oldest of three girls who’d lost their parents. To support her sisters, she’d either needed to marry quickly or make use of her stellar baking skills. She chose the latter.
This photograph was taken in front of her bakery. Rosalind holds August’s arm, and they gaze at the photographer with a joy so incandescent that just looking at them feels like an invasion of privacy. I have seen August happy, but I have never seen him like this.
As for Rosalind, she is positively ethereal, a beautiful young woman of no more than twenty-two, tiny, with light hair and a face that is as beautiful as her soon-to-be-husband’s is handsome.
“She’s gorgeous,” I say.
“She was many, many things,” he says. “That was one of them.”
I could be envious, hearing my husband speak this way of another woman. I am not. I know how much he cared for Rosalind. She’d been like a sister to him, years after he’d lost his own.
“I . . . I thought I saw a young woman in the halls,” I say. “I mean, yes, I did definitely see one. I presumed it was a maid and went after her because I was lost, but she kept moving. She disappeared into a room . . . after beckoning me. That’s how I found the earl and Lottie.”
William nods slowly. Six months ago, I’d have tensed, interpreting his careful reaction as doubt, but I know now he’s assimilating my words.
When we first reunited, a comment about ghosts had elicited a very clear reaction from him. A very dismissive reaction. Superstitious nonsense. So I’d kept my experiences to myself, only to later discover that as soon as I said I saw ghosts, he believed me. The critical part there was me. If I told him I saw unicorns, he’d believe me, and if he said the same, I’d believe him.
“This young woman led you to Tynesford,” he says. “So you could interrupt and rescue Lottie.”
Now I’m the one pausing. “I hadn’t thought of that, but yes, it makes sense.”
“And you thought it might be Rosalind’s ghost.” He glances at the photograph. “Was it?”
“No.” I look at the picture. “The figure was fair-haired and small of stature, and I didn’t get a good look at her face, but I’m quite certain it wasn’t Rosalind.”
He exhales, echoing my own relief.
I continue, “I wouldn’t want to think of her trapped here, unable to communicate with her family. I also . . .” I take a deep breath. “August isn’t the only one who doesn’t want to believe she’s dead. That’s silly—I never even knew her. I certainly don’t want to think of her having abandoned her family, though.”
“She wouldn’t,” William says firmly. “August and Rosalind were having . . . troubles.” He looks at the photograph. “I haven’t admitted that, have I? It wasn’t the sort of trouble where one abandons one’s family, though. Certainly not for anyone as attached to family as Rosalind. She loved August, adored her son and was very close to both her sisters. The problem was August. He could be very jealous, and he struggled with that. He could be controlling, and she struggled with that. They would have worked it out. But you wonder why he believes she left. That is it, I think, even if he’d never admit such a thing. He fears he drove her off, and somehow, it’s easier to blame her for abandoning them. Do I think she ran away? Absolutely not. Do I think she died? Unfortunately, yes. Do I hope to be proven wrong? That she fell and struck her head and lost her memory, like some gothic heroine, and she’ll reappear one day? Yes. Mostly, though, like you, I simply would not want to think of her as a ghost.”
He pauses and then says, his voice lower, “That is what I’d hoped for, though, when I thought you were lost to me. That I’d stay at Thorne Manor even after I died. That I’d see you again that way, when you returned. That you might even see me . . .” He rubs his hands over his face and shivers. “Fortunately, it did not come to that.”
I hug him fiercely, my head on his shoulder. I’d thought the same thing . . . while hoping that even if we were separated forever, he’d have moved on and found peace, no matter how much I’d have desperately loved to see him again.
He hugs me back and kisses the top of my head. I reach up and kiss him properly, a deep one that chases away the memories of that terrible, uncertain time.
“It could have been a maid,” I say as we part. “A living maid, who alerted me to the issue and then slipped through a door I didn’t see in the dark.” I roll my shoulders. “Either way, that particular young woman seemed fine. It’s Lottie that matters.”
“And it’s Lottie I’ll speak to August about, posthaste. Let us go find him now.” He glances at the photograph. “Best not to tell him this is here.”
“I won’t.”
William speaks to August alone. While August is hardly the sort to blush and stammer at the mention of sex—even in front of a woman—he is still a man of his time, and this conversation will go better without me to hear it. Particularly if the answer is not to my liking. I can’t imagine August shrugging off Lottie’s dilemma, but he might have already decided against offering her a job at his London home and instead just promise to have the housekeeper and other staff look out for her.
I needn’t have worried. The matter is settled in the time it takes me to freshen up in the lavatory. August will offer Lottie a position, and if she agrees, she can quit Courtenay Hall right after the holidays and depart with August and Edmund. The earl will be livid, of course, but it’s not as if he gets on with August anyway. Also it’s not as if Tynesford can threaten to cut off August’s allowance—he did that when August married Rosalind—or threaten to keep him from visiting Courtenay Hall—access is part of August’s birthright. So while I feel bad about giving the brothers one more point of friction, William assures me August is only too happy to whisk an innocent girl from his brother’s lecherous clutches.
From there, we depart. August offers to smuggle us into his quarters for the night, but I can only imagine what kind of scandal would erupt if we were spotted sneaking out in the morning. No, we gratefully accept a hot flask of tea from the cook, and then we are off for the journey home.
Once again, William makes good on his promise of an intimate diversion. Or he does after I assure him I am quite awake enough and warm enough to enjoy it. We find a sheltered spot, ensure the horse is comfortable and then get comfortable ourselves in a bed of blankets. It is a wonderful interlude, snow just beginning to fall around us, the night clear and bright with stars . . . though admittedly, I don’t notice either until I’m lying there afterward, cuddled with William and staring up at the sky.