A Bloom in Winter (31 page)

The light in his blue eyes grew dark. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you were trying to kill yourself.”

“Don’t be daft. I was perfectly fine, Jon. I knew what I was doing and you know it.”

“You have been up in a plane, what? A half a dozen times and have been training three times? How does that make you a pilot? How does that make you think you can risk an expensive machine that doesn’t belong to you, not to mention your own life?”

They glared at each other, unwilling to fight as the men wheeled the aeroplane back toward the barn. Rowena jerked her gloves off and shoved them into her pocket, then advanced on him, her mouth tight. “And why would you care about my life? Your brother informed me in no uncertain terms that you were done with me and I was no longer welcome at the house. Look, I have the marks to prove it.”

She pulled up her sleeve where George had gripped her arm to shove her back toward her horse. Delicate bruises in the form of fingertips were already forming.

The marks took the top off Jon’s anger. She could see it in the horrified expression on his face. He reached out and ran his fingers gently down the marks on her arm. “I’ll kill him for that,” he said, choking on his anger.

She snatched her arm away from him. “That’s not what
I want. What I want to know is what you saw that would make you tell him that we were finished? And why on earth would you choose to have that conversation with him, someone who hates me, before you would even have it with me?”

Hurt, angry tears formed and rolled down her cheeks.

His lip curled. “You act so innocent, but I saw you. I went to your aunt’s house to try to get your attention. All I could think of was how happy I was that Dirkes had returned to the city so I could see you. And can you imagine what I saw when I arrived?”

Rowena shook her head, bewildered.

“You and your
fake
fiancé, rubbing all over each other out in front of your aunt’s house like you had no shame. His lips on your cheek, whispering things against your hair, and you clinging to him like he was the last man on the earth, as though I was nothing, the farthest thing from your mind!”

Rowena reeled at his accusations. What was he talking about? She racked her mind but came up with nothing. “And when did you supposedly see me with Sebastian?”

“A couple of weeks ago. You got out of a motorcar with some man and then Sebastian came out and you practically ran into his arms.” Jon spat the words at her, as if daring her to deny them.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she flashed. “I . . . I’ve never . . . ” Comprehension dawned and he saw it in her face.

“Now try calling me a liar!” Jon stepped closer to her, his face twisted, and she took a step back. “Why couldn’t you just break it off with me? Or did you want the forbidden excitement of a love affair with someone below your social status? Is that what I was? An experiment?”

Pain radiated throughout her entire body. She trembled as it moved from her heart to every limb, organ, and muscle. “Apparently, what we shared and what we had was not enough for you to give me the benefit of the doubt. You sound just like George. Victoria went missing that day. I had no idea what happened to her. Eventually we learned she is in prison for something she couldn’t possibly have done. So what you saw was Sebastian comforting me because I thought my sister was
dead
!”

They stared at each other. Jon was breathing hard, but she spotted the moment shame crept into his face. He realized she was telling the truth. “How is your sister?” he finally asked.

“As far as I know, she’s fine. There was nothing I could do in London so I came here because you told me you would be here. I arrived late last night and rode to your house first thing this morning.” She paused, tears swelling her throat and making it hard to speak. “How could you think . . . and how could you tell George . . . was it really so easy for you to believe that I could just . . . ” She stopped, too choked up to speak further.

He took her elbow and led her farther away from the men working on the aeroplanes. The dampness of the field tugged at Rowena’s shoes and a slight breeze dried the tears on her face. “When I saw you in his arms . . . I don’t know . . . I went a bit mad. All the warnings my brother had been whispering in my ear came to mind . . . I was jealous. And so hurt.”

She pulled her arm out of his. “How could you not trust me? After everything.”

Jon turned away and looked at the horizon. “Maybe this entire incident just reveals a basic problem between us, Rowena.” He cast his eyes downward. “For me, the name Buxton will always mean deceit, duplicity, and betrayal.”

The punch to her stomach almost doubled her over. “What
does that mean for us, then? That you are just going to let me go because my name happens to be Buxton?”

He didn’t answer and alarms started at the base of her neck and ran through her entire body. She wanted to throw herself in his arms and beg him not to do this. She wanted to put her hands over her ears and run away so she wouldn’t have to listen to the words she knew were coming.

“Perhaps the implications of your name, your heritage, everything your family stands for is something I can’t get over. You love your family. Can you really walk away from them for me? My God, Rowena, you just lost your father, how could you stand losing everyone else, as well?”

She felt as if a crater had been blown into her chest. “So that’s it. You’re not even going to fight for me. For
us
. You’re just . . . just going to walk away?”

“Rowena, I love you, but I think we’re both being naïve to think this is something we can just overlook.”

She turned to face him. She saw pain in his eyes but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. “You didn’t seem to have a difficult time overlooking my surname when you took me to bed, did you?” She slammed her fists against his chest. “No, you certainly didn’t care that I was a Buxton then, did you?” She hit him in the chest again and he reached up and grabbed her hands.

“It wasn’t like that, and you know it.”

“I don’t know what it was like. I thought I did, but now I don’t because the man I made love to would have fought for me and you’re just walking away.”

She was breathing heavily, panic unraveling in the back of her mind.

“I know to quit when something isn’t working. It’s how I stay alive. You’re an aristocrat; I’m not and never will be. Hell,
Rowena, your hats cost more than I make in a month! I don’t have the kind of money . . . ”

She wrenched her hands out of his. “I have my own money. I don’t need a man for money.”

“I should live off my wife’s money then?” His voice was indignant and Rowena closed her eyes for a moment.

“You don’t love me enough,” she finally said, her voice soft. “I thought you did, but you don’t. Not nearly enough.”

She turned then and walked toward the barn, her entire being hoping and praying that he would stop her, but knowing that he wouldn’t.
Coward
, she thought as she walked away.
Bloody coward
.

E
ndurance. Every day became an exercise in endurance for Victoria, who, like Robinson Crusoe, kept a tally of days hidden behind her cot. She would scratch out a vertical line with a hairpin she’d found in the chapel one morning and every Sunday she would scratch one diagonally across the six scratches to mark a week. It was her afternoon activity after her eyes finally gave out from reading.

Because she could only check out two books a week, she read them over and over, committing long passages to memory. Anything by Charles Dickens or Jane Austen was a treat, though she adored the newer books by E. M. Forster as well. Eleanor came to visit twice a week, ostensibly to give her a checkup, but mostly to give her news from her family and to relay news back.

Through Eleanor’s urging and patronage, Victoria was able to volunteer for a program educating inmates. Twice a week, a guard led her to the cafeteria, where they were supplied with old schoolbooks, papers, and pencils. She had three students that she tutored diligently, good girls, whose only crime was doing what they had to in order to survive abject poverty. Penelope was a former prostitute; Camilla stole food from the restaurant she worked in, food that was earmarked to be thrown away; and though Ann never mentioned why she was in prison, Victoria
couldn’t imagine such a sweet girl doing anything illegal. The simple act of teaching these young women to read and write fulfilled her in ways she had never dreamed of, and she knew it was something she wanted to continue doing.

“There’s such a need,” Victoria told Eleanor, who had come by to give her a checkup.

Eleanor nodded. “In my neighborhood alone, the number of uneducated women is astonishing. I do what I can, but I am so busy giving medical checkups, I don’t have time for anything else.”

“What do you mean, medical checkups?” Victoria was curious. It seemed to her that Eleanor was always at the prison. How did she have time for anything else?

“There’s a settlement house in an old abandoned building down the block from me. Once a week, I give checkups and such. I beg, borrow, and do everything but steal medicine to hand out to those who can’t afford it.”

Victoria was intrigued. “What else do you do there?”

“Me? Oh, I don’t do anything else there, except attend when they have a speaker come in.”

“What kind of speakers?”

“Oh, no one well-known. Just people trying to help.” Eleanor pronounced her in good health and began putting her tools away.

“Maybe I could help once in a while,” Victoria suggested.

“Perhaps,” was all Eleanor said, and Victoria saw the wisdom in that. Hadn’t nearly all of Victoria’s own problems come from being too impetuous, allowing herself to be seduced by a cause—and a woman—she truly knew so little about? Not gaining counsel from those who had the wisdom to guide her?

Victoria saw all too clearly that her own quest for independence
had been more childish rebellion than a sign of any true maturity on her part. She vowed that when she finally got out, things were going to be different. Her father had worked quietly and diligently to right the wrongs he saw in the world—not through splashy gestures, but instead by giving money and time to causes he thought appropriate and, she now realized, by educating his daughters, including Prudence, in a way that prepared them for the modern world.

She’d been so blind not to have seen all of this before.

After Eleanor had gone, she scratched another line into the whitewash covering the block walls. “Two more weeks,” she told herself. “Two more weeks.”

Nerves fought in her stomach with excitement. What would it be like to be out in the real world again? She had almost forgotten what it was like to turn on and off the lights at will.

She already knew what she wanted. She didn’t want to stay in London at all; she wanted to go directly to Summerset and spend the rest of the spring and summer there. She needed to spend time with her beloved nanny Iris and with Rowena. And she would think about her future.

She had sent word to Kit regarding her plans because she knew he would help her make it happen—no matter what the family said.

And Kit. What would she do with Kit? Did he love her? Or was his behavior merely the attitude of a protective best friend?

And more important, what would she do with his love if he offered it?

*   *   *

Prudence put the finishing touches on the cream cake she had made and decorated for Andrew’s party. Susie had gone back to
Summerset earlier in the week, so Prudence had baked the cake herself under Muriel’s strict tutelage. It looked perfect, but the taste testing would have to wait.

Andrew had spent the last three days in Glasgow, sitting the examinations that would either place him in the Royal Veterinary College or show him what he was lacking and make him wait five months to try again.

Prudence didn’t know how he would handle failure. They had made friends from the college, a young couple who were sipping tea with Katie in the sitting room. The husband had to take the examination twice, but his family came from money and were able to fund an extra five months of study until he passed the exams. Prudence knew they could make it, too, but wasn’t sure how her husband would feel about living off his wife for even longer, especially after such an initial failure.

She closed her eyes and thought back on their conversation at the train station earlier that week, a conversation that had been a revelation for her. With her emotional turmoil over Rowena and Sebastian still roiling in her stomach, she had kissed her husband on the cheek and wished him well, but that hadn’t been enough for him. He’d taken her hands into his and bent his head down. His eyes had looked like green grass that morning and the quiet love she saw in them took her breath away.

“I know we didn’t get married under the best of circumstances and I don’t even know if I would have been your first choice.” She’d started to hush him but he stopped her with his finger. “No. Let me say this.” He took in a deep breath. “But that doesn’t matter to me. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy. No matter what happens at the examination, I will always be grateful to the beautiful woman who gave me a chance, who believed in me like my own family never did.” He
bent his head and kissed her gloved fingertips. Tenderness filled her heart, leaving no more room for guilt. Yes, she loved Sebastian. Part of her would always love Sebastian, but for the first time, she knew without a doubt that her choice had been the right one. She trusted her future in the strong, capable hands of this good, good man.