“So pretend,” he said, more gently than he felt, “that I’m one of your old girlfriends. What would we talk about? Novels? Horses?”
“In Vienna,” Mary said, “I would have complained about my piano master. He was a harsh, impossible man. I never could please him; he was constantly heaping abuse on my head. Obviously, that’s not a possibility now.”
He glanced over at her. “I thought you were happy in Vienna.”
“I was. It wasn’t…it wasn’t that kind of abuse, if you catch my meaning. His regular lamentations were more along the lines of, ‘Why did God see fit to give you perfect phrasing, and yet not give you the will to practice regularly?’ He accepted no excuses, tolerated no errors.”
“He sounds difficult.” He sounded like John’s own father.
“Yes and no. He was furious when I—” Her gaze slid to him, and then returned to center. “When I told him I wasn’t coming back,” she finished.
Because she’d been caught up in her father’s schemes?
The answer came a beat later. No. Because she’d agreed to marry him. He turned and looked at her. Her body was tense, her steps taken gingerly. He’d heard her play before. He knew precisely how good she was. But he’d never asked himself what it would mean for her to marry a farmer from Southampton. She’d tasted greatness…and she’d chosen him instead.
More lies, or something else?
I don’t love you.
He didn’t understand anything. He swallowed and looked away. “And in Southampton? What did you talk of with your friends there?”
She snorted. “You. Much of the time.”
“Me?” The night was warm, the air thick around them. He took a deep breath. “You didn’t really.”
“Oh, but we did. Even before I met you that first time, I’d heard all about you.”
“Yes.” He looked away. “I suppose. I was rather different from the other fellows. I know that. I was shy around the ladies, and I always had my head in some project or other. Also, my nose isn’t straight—”
“We didn’t talk about any of that,” Mary said, and for the first time since he’d encountered her, a note of humor crept into her voice. “Good heavens, John. Are you blushing?”
“No. Trick of the moonlight.” He scrubbed his heated cheeks. “What…uh, what else might there be to talk about?”
“How you saved Mr. Iver’s mare, when she was foaling twins. Your proposal to improve the roads at the edge of the city using sawdust and india-rubber. The way you kept badgering all the other farmers to send off for a soil analysis.”
“Was that too annoying?”
“The consensus was that you were quite the catch. All the young ladies agreed that in twenty years, you’d be running everything.”
Impossible. They’d all giggled at him.
“Are you sure you didn’t spend all your time talking about how I set the grain silo on fire?”
“Oh, yes. I heard about that all the time.”
“Good. I’d hate to think that everyone represented me as some kind of—”
She actually let out a little laugh. “That’s not why we talked about it. Do you happen to recall that while you were working on the firebreak, you removed your shirt?”
“Gah.” He set his hand against a tree. “I’ll never be able to look any of them in the eye again.”
“You look well enough without a shirt.” She shook her head. “How odd, that you would see yourself like that. Is that what you think? That you’re a little shy with the ladies?”
“Mary, when I first met you, I walked up to you at the end of a brilliant performance and browbeat you about your selection of music.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” she said.
“I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I just thought that…”
“That what?”
“That I didn’t want to let you disappear,” he whispered. “Not without saying something. Anything.” The night took in his words, swallowed them up. Crickets called to one another; an owl hooted softly.
“We’ve come a long road since then,” she whispered.
We.
There hadn’t been a we in months. He wasn’t sure there could be again.
“You were right.” She swallowed. “I—I do need a friend. Someone to talk to about just this—about people we once knew in common, about things that don’t exist for any reason except to lighten my heart. It has been so long.”
He should have felt triumphant at that.
“Please,” she said, “please, don’t tell me that this is friendship if all you want is to hear my answers. I can bear a great many things, but not that. Don’t treat me like a real person if you don’t really believe it.”
He opened his mouth to tell her the truth.
And then he thought of his nephew, of the thousands of pounds that had gone missing. He thought of that moment when she’d handed back his ring and said she didn’t love him. He thought of the laugh in her voice just moments before. He didn’t know what the truth was. He only knew what he wished it could be.
“God’s honest truth,” he told her. “I missed you. The money was just an excuse to find you.”
And maybe that would be the truth—that he’d loved her and hurt when she left. That he could put aside his hurt and they might take up matters where they’d left off. Maybe it could be the truth.
In all likelihood, it couldn’t.
“I must get back soon.” But she didn’t move away from him.
“Will I see you again here tomorrow?”
“For…for friendship?”
He nodded. Not quite the truth. Not quite a lie. She’d hurt him, and he couldn’t let himself forget it, no matter what she smelled like. He couldn’t forget the role she’d played in her father’s scheme—whatever that had been. But she smiled, and when she did, some tense, hard center deep inside his soul seemed to ease.
“Then yes,” she said. “I’d like that. Good-bye, then, for now.” She turned to go. But she took only a few steps before she turned around and paced back to him, stopping square in front of him. She lifted her hand to his face, touching his nose ever so lightly. Her fingers brushed his cheek, his lips, as if she were committing the feel of him to memory. He stood in place, not daring to move.
Her touch made full-truth of his half-lies. It made him want to gather her up and pull her close, to forget what she’d done and forgive what she had said. His skin sang with her nearness.
She smiled, a little sadly. “I missed you, too,” she whispered.
And then she turned and fled.
MARY’S BREAKFASTS OVER THE NEXT MORNINGS became an increasingly strange affair.
The experience put her in mind of a book she’d read as a small child—her very favorite book, one that her nurse had read to her twice daily, until Mary had been able to recite it alongside her. She’d loved that book so much. But when she read it again at fifteen, she’d been utterly unable to understand the fascination that it had held. The words were still the same; it was she who had altered beyond recognition.
The breakfasts did not change, either, but Mary felt herself shifting, day by day, evening meeting by evening meeting. Sir Walter always read his paper; his wife always perused the fashion page. Tea, crumpets, and preserves were present at all times, alongside the rotating fare of kippers and liver. And yet, somehow, over the course of the week, the tableau altered.
Sir Walter seemed smaller. His wife’s discussion of fashion stopped irritating her. The world became less stark, more forgiving.
When Mary was eight, she’d attempted one of her father’s books of poetry—dry, dull, inexplicable stuff, she had thought. But at nineteen, the words had captivated her.
That was the difference having a friend made. It didn’t change any of the underlying facts. Sir Walter was still a monster. He still held her salary; his wife still retreated into fashion. But Mary no longer dreaded waking on the mornings, and that made everything better.
&nb
sp; Today, a few scudding clouds overhead saved her from having to move the screen. Today, she noticed that the roses in the garden, almost past the prime of their bloom, still imparted a faint fragrance to the air. Today she could bear the endless monotony of Lady Patsworth’s lengthy commentary…
“An overskirt of black lace,” she was saying. “And underneath, pink satin. Black and pink.” She frowned. “That seems an unusual combination of color. But appealing, don’t you think?”
“It sounds a lovely mix of feminine and strong,” Mary agreed.
“What!?”
That shriek of outrage hadn’t come from Lady Patsworth. It had come from Sir Walter, who was slamming the paper down in a fury.
Lady Patsworth froze, her eyes wide with terror.
“Not black and pink,” she said hastily. “If it’s so objectionable. Surely I meant—”
“Is nothing sacred any more?” Sir Walter ripped his section of newsprint in half, and then reached across the table and yanked his wife’s section from her hands. He tore that in two as well.
“—I meant pink and white,” she was saying. “Feminine and virtuous, not feminine and strong. If that will make it better. Please. Don’t.”
Sir Walter stared wildly at her, and then looked about him. His fists were full of paper; a maid had rushed from the house at his tirade. She drew up a few feet distant, as if unsure how to proceed.
He took a deep breath, and then made a ball of the shreds. “That’s it,” he announced crisply. “We are done with the paper in the mornings. I am canceling the subscription this very afternoon.”
Lady Patsworth swallowed. “But—”
He glared at her. “I won’t have my wife exposed to such rubbish.” He motioned the maid over and handed her the pieces. “Burn this,” he commanded. “Burn it immediately.”
She ducked her head and disappeared. After a long moment, Sir Walter followed her into the house.
Lady Patsworth stared after him in stunned silence. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t do this, without something to take my mind…” Her hands were shaking.
Lady Patsworth was not the sort of person who encouraged her companions to share her confidences. She kept her distance.
Still… “Lady Patsworth,” Mary said, “is there not something that can be done?”
The other woman shook her head slowly. “That is what it means to be married. There is no escape. Even if I could send word to my brother…what could he do? I’m married to Sir Walter. I’m his responsibility, his charge. Legally. And there’s nothing anyone else can do about it.”
“Can that not be changed? He’s not…not faithful, is he?”
They’d never talked of anything so intimate. Lady Patsworth stared straight ahead, and then shook her head.
“So you have cause for divorce.”
“Divorce.” The other woman said the word viciously. “Who is granted divorces? A handful every decade, and then only to the most wealthy, the most powerful. I have nobody who would even introduce a bill on my behalf in Parliament.” She spoke in low, vehement tones. She punctuated the last by spearing a piece of kipper with her fork. But she didn’t eat it; she just stabbed it again and again.
“Lady Patsworth.”
“Don’t try to help,” the other woman snapped. “He’ll only send you away if you do.”
Lady Patsworth’s shoulders were rigid, her eyes focused on something far away. She took a deep breath, and then another, and then another. Mary knew all too well what it was like to be trapped, to dread every coming day. She’d been on the verge of breaking when John appeared. If he hadn’t come…
“There must be something I can do,” she finally said. “Something to make your life bearable.”
Lady Patsworth let out another ragged breath. “Yes,” she said finally. “You can help me to design my own gowns.”
Chapter Seven
“DID I EVER TELL YOU about the time my mare stopped sleeping?”
Mary had not expected John to start with such a question, when she met him that next night. She wasn’t sure what she expected from him any longer. They’d walked. They talked of old times. Sometimes, they touched—glove to glove, glove to sleeve. It was welcoming, to be able to forget for a few minutes every day what waited for her back at Doyle’s Grange.
“I thought of it,” he said, “because this is the fifth night when we’ve foregone sleep, and I was wondering if the effect on humans would be much like it was on horses.”
“I don’t understand,” Mary said. “Aren’t horses always sleeping? Every time I walk by one, it seems to be dozing off on its feet.”
“That’s just napping,” he said, with a wave of his free hand. “Horses sleep curled up on the ground, too. Like dogs. They don’t need much sleep, but they do need some. I first noticed something was wrong because she had a scrape on her front fetlock. The next morning, another.”
“Poor thing.”
“And then there was her personality. She was always a placid, sweet thing. But she began to shy from shadows. I thought the stable manager was abusing her, actually. So that night, I silently climbed into the hayloft to observe.”
“And?”
He guided her around a tree, keeping her in the shade of its branches. “I stayed up half the night watching for my hapless employee, nursing my wrath. And what I saw was this: around two in the morning, she started to collapse.”
“With nobody there?”
“With nobody there,” he confirmed. “She fell where she was standing, striking her fetlock against the stable floor. Then she scrambled to her feet. Precisely as if she had nodded off while on watch duty.”
“Oh, goodness. But why did she not just sleep?”
“That took a little longer to determine. You see, I had just built a windmill to pump water from the south field. The noise it made was different, and it was frightening her. She was waiting for whatever was making those odd creaking sounds to catch up to her and devour her.”
Mary gave a little laugh. “I’m sorry. That shouldn’t be funny.”
“I moved her to a pasture where she couldn’t hear the carnivorous windmill, and she was good as new after that. So I understand the dangers of not sleeping. You risk your knees—and your dignity. Tell me if your knees suffer, will you?”
She laughed again.
“There,” he said, “Now that’s what I like to hear. You have the most beautiful laugh, Mary.”
She pulled away. “Save your compliments for your horses.” But she was smiling.
Deep inside, she knew that she was only setting herself up for a fall. He would leave. He would remember that he hadn’t really forgiven her. And having tasted friendship once again, having remembered how sweet it was to trust someone else, it would be all the more bitter to have it wrested away. But even knowing that she was being foolish—knowing that this would end, and she would be hurt—she couldn’t make herself push him away.
She’d been right. She’d missed him—missed the life she had once had—too much to be anything other than very foolish when it came to him.
“So,” Mary said, as lightly as she could manage, “why did you build a windmill?” As she spoke, she rested her hand against his arm.
He started walking. “I was sixteen,” he said. “And my father had given me a piece of land.”
“A gift?”
“A threat.” He sighed, and turned his head to look out over the valley. “He didn’t want me to think so much about farming. There was no money in land anymore, he said. We had some wealth remaining, and he was throwing it all into investment—that, he said was where all the money lay. But I kept coming to him with my head in the clouds, spouting ragged bits of advice I was learning from books and farmers’ magazines. He was sick to death of my hopeful burbling, and so he told me that I could make all the changes I wanted on the farm, if only I could do one thing.”
Next to her, he smiled in memory. It was a deep, dark smile, one that drew her in.
/> “He gave me a piece of land where all the water for miles drained. What wasn’t fen in the plot was taken up by bulrushes. And he told me if I could make a crop of rye grow there, I could do as I wished, instead of going into business.”
“Didn’t you want to go into business?”
He shrugged. “Not particularly. It seemed to involve a great deal of sitting around and talking to others. Rather dull, actually. I’ve always liked working with my hands. I gather he gave me that plot of land to beat my misplaced ambitions out of me. To give me an impossible task, just so I could fail at it.”
When he’d been sixteen, she would have just started in Vienna. She’d been full of hopes about her playing—that she’d become so brilliant that she might play anywhere, despite the unfortunate deficiency of her sex. They’d both taken on impossible tasks. But he’d succeeded at his.
“I didn’t believe them,” John said. “Not even when all the available choices failed. Tile drains, laid at reasonable intervals, simply covered in water. There was too much mud to manage a proper drainage canal. It took me two years to convince myself that no passive draining scheme would serve. And even then, I wouldn’t give up. That’s when I began to consider an active scheme. I ordered architectural drawings from the Netherlands, from drainage windmills in Kent.”
“And so you built a windmill and showed them all.”
“It wasn’t that easy,” he said. “I built it, and it didn’t work. It took me another six months to work out the details. By that time, my father…”
“Was he urging you to give up, to move on?”
There was a long pause. “No,” John said softly. “But I remember the moment when I finally got the machinery in the tower to work right. It looked right. I examined it from every angle, and it matched the specifications I had. I took it apart and put it back together three times, and still the bloody thing wouldn’t work. I was beginning to lose the light, and the oil lamp was not bright enough to show intricate detail. I had told myself I was going to finish that day. And that’s how I figured it out—because I was too stubborn to leave. It got so dark I couldn’t see—so I heard it instead. Just a faint grinding. Enough for me to realize the wood pump rod wasn’t seated properly. It was so close to straight I couldn’t see that it was off. But I could hear it. I fixed it in the dark, and the next morning, when I came to look at the results, my reservoir was filling and my land was drying.”