A Lady Awakened (40 page)

Astonishing how a man could be guilty of such monstrosity and still go about looking like any other man. A bit weak in the chin, with a florid complexion and deep-set eyes, and teeth just begging to be knocked out by a good punch or two.

“These are your neighbors.” Mrs. Russell let go Mrs. Weaver’s hand and wove her fingers before her on the table. “You may or may not know them, but make no mistake, they are thoroughly acquainted with you.”

“What the deuce is this about?” The man’s eyes shifted left and right, taking in the grim stares that surrounded him on either side.

The magistrate Mr. Rivers, with the air of one long accustomed to authority, inclined slightly forward. “Do you deny you committed vile indecencies against women who had no power of redress, when you used to live in this house?”

For a full second Mr. Russell looked startled. Then his face settled into a cloaked expression. “I won’t sit and be subjected to this,” he said, beginning to rise from his chair.

Theo was on his feet in an instant and Pinnock, too, closed in on the man. “I suggest you sit down.” Was that his voice? Good Lord. He almost frightened himself. “These people have been at great inconvenience to come here, and you shall hear what they have to say.” One day he must learn Rivers’s brand of understated power. Today, this tone of barely reined-in violence would have to do. He waited for Russell to take his seat before returning to his own.

“There are things we will not tolerate.” Rivers resumed almost as though there’d been no interruption. “This is a decent neighborhood. Those of us who have servants take an interest in their well-being. To let such abomination as that with which you are charged pass unremarked, is a stain on all our good names.”

“I don’t see that what happened in this house so many years ago, if it did happen at all, is any of your concern.” Russell’s truculent gaze swept round the table.

“It concerns me, to begin with.” That was a balding, bespectacled man Theo had not met before, sitting at Mrs. Russell’s left hand. “You’ve disgraced a house with which I’d had a long and proud association. And your presence now, when you did not trouble to attend Mr. Russell’s wedding or funeral, suggests exactly the sort of grasping suspicions you have already made plain to me. I fear I will be unable to continue as Seton Park’s solicitor, if you become resident here.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else to make the Sunday sermons as well.” Sly devil, that Atkins. As though he weren’t already planning to give up the curacy. So he’d said not fifteen minutes prior.

“I’m troubled by this talk of
suspicions
.” Mrs. Landers, at his left, had a magnificent fastidious way of speaking, handling each word like a jeweler hefting uncut stones. “Does he dare to imply an aspersion on the character of the late Mr. Russell’s widow?”

“No one can deny a gentleman’s right to safeguard his interests.” The man’s gall was astounding. He was pushed back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, his posture a blunt defiance to the judgment of everyone in the room. “Widows will defraud a rightful heir sometimes. We’ve all heard of it.”

“The time to think of a gentleman’s rights was surely sixteen years since.” Again the solicitor spoke, his spectacles glinting as he leaned into sunlight. “Before you chose to commit such grievous wrongs as have rendered you unfit to ever be called
gentleman
again. As to your insinuations regarding Mrs. Russell, I shall not dignify those with any response.”

One must glance, naturally, at the widow to see in what spirit she took this defense. She rather resembled one of those martyr pictures that turned up in illustrated prayer books. Her arms made a graceful circle, fingers laced in the middle, and her downcast eyes evoked divine patience even while her uplifted chin suggested righteous pride. If he should announce, to the table at large, that he’d been to bed with that woman, not one person was likely to believe him.

He cleared his throat and grasped for as much innocence as he could contrive in his turn. “Am I to understand you mean to impose yourself here, hovering about and making an honest woman uneasy, until the event that will determine the property’s succession?”

“It’s my right.” He’d gone a bit back on his heels, Russell had, like an overmatched pugilist. His fingers were twitching where they gripped the opposite elbows. “This isn’t her house. She can’t bar me from it.”

“None of us can.” Theo sent a glance to Rivers, to Mrs. Rivers, to Granville, to Mrs. Canning and her friends. “But we can make things uncomfortable for you here as long as you choose to remain. Regardless what your conduct is now, this neighborhood will regard you, and treat you, like a man who violated innocent young women and escaped justice. You cannot expect ever to be a gentleman of standing here.”

“Nor in town.” Mrs. Canning angled her baleful attention to the foot of the table. “You may depend on us to make everyone within ten miles aware of what you are.”

“And if that were all you had to fear, you might say devil take it and stay on here all the same.” Mr. Weaver’s soft voice broke in. He’d kept his eyes to the tablecloth most of the meeting, and so he did now, even while speaking. “So let me put it plain: you’ve more than that to fear from me.” He might not have been here, Mr. Weaver. Yesterday he’d said he would not come if Mrs. Weaver didn’t wish it. But obviously she’d decided she did. “You brought shame on my wife that she’ll never be free of. It was none of her own making, but she’s borne it ever since, while you went about living a gentleman’s life with never a look back. Don’t expect me to let that stand.”

“I’ll put it plainer still.” Mrs. Weaver lifted a gaze that could give a man nightmares. Her voice shook with sentiments too dark to have names. “If you stay in this country I’ll stick a knife in your foul throat. Though I go to the gallows for it and leave my children orphans, I promise you I will.”

Mr. Russell shifted, ducking from her basilisk stare. If he recognized her, he gave no sign. “They threaten me. You’ve all witnessed it.” He sought for sympathy from one face after another. “Does nobody mean to do anything?”

It certainly sounds as though Mrs. Weaver means to do something
. He bit his tongue, though the temptation was strong.

The solicitor bowed. “If you should after all inherit and decide, everything considered, that you’d rather not take up residence, I shall be glad to draw up a lease and help you find a suitable tenant.”

No one else had anything to say. The widow gave a quick nod. “Very good, then. Mr. Russell, I thank you for your time and attention. We won’t detain you further.”

Without meeting anyone’s eyes the man pushed up from his chair and went out of the room. Atkins exchanged a look with Mrs. Russell and got up as well.

“Are you going after him?” Good Lord. To what purpose?

“I’m a clergyman. I must believe no one is beyond redemption.” He flashed a smile. “And if I can make him believe it too, I may serve Mrs. Russell’s cause.” With a bow to the company he left.

Other people got up as well. The solicitor fell into conversation with the three ladies from town. The Seton Park housekeeper approached Mrs. Weaver, one tentative hand held out, and said a few words. Mr. Weaver nodded, looking embarrassed, as Mr. Rivers spoke to him. He stayed at Mrs. Weaver’s side.

Such tricky business, being a husband. Knowing when to be your wife’s champion, and when to stand back that she might be her own. So many large and small skills to master beyond simply pleasing a woman in bed. Yet one more unexpected lesson from his time in Sussex.

Over Mrs. Tavistock’s shoulder he caught the widow’s eye and she smiled a thin smile. She looked exhausted. Likely her composure had tried her beyond her expectations, and likely she’d be asleep by the time he came tonight. Well enough. Not so very many things remained for them to say.

S
HE’D DONE
it. No, they had. Allies beyond her imagining had rallied round her and now, with any luck, Mr. James Russell would go away. Corrupt he might be, but he was surely not so bold—not so stupid—as to stay in the face of Mrs. Weaver’s threat.

Martha caught the loose end of her shawl to stop it flapping in the breeze, and wound it more tightly about her. All the kind callers had gone on their way except for Mr. Atkins who was, presumably, somewhere in the house attempting to set Mr. James Russell on the path to rehabilitation. One wished him luck, and left it at that.

Laughter came to her from somewhere in the garden ahead. She rounded the corner of a hedge to find the two young Russell boys throwing sticks for the same sheepdog she’d watched Mr. Farris training, the day the will was read. Their mother and the governess sat on a bench to one side.

She paused for a fortifying breath. Nothing could be done. She should not have disinherited them if she could possibly have avoided it, but there had simply been no other way.

Mrs. James Russell saw her and came to her feet. “I hope you don’t mind the boys playing here. We’ve been careful to keep them away from any of the planted beds.”

“Not at all. Most of those beds are done for the season, anyway.” An awkward silence came. What on earth was she to say to this woman? “Do your boys have a dog at home?”

Mrs. Russell shook her head. “Mr. Russell has gun dogs, but he prefers they not be played with, or treated as pets. He finds it spoils their temperament.”

“Ah. This one is a worker as well, though he seems to forget the fact easily enough.” The smile with which she punctuated this remark felt taut as an ill-fitted glove. “Please do sit down. You may stay here as long as you like.”
Here
, of course, meaning this garden, on this day, even while with all her might she schemed to make the woman’s husband bundle up his whole family and be gone.

“Will you sit, too? I hope you’ve been warned against overexertion.” Her cheeks colored prettily as she made the shy admonition. The governess removed herself to be nearer the boys, and Martha must sit beside Mrs. Russell’s fruitless generosity.

They sat in silence, watching the Russell sons. A minute or so of observation and she should not have had to ask whether they owned a dog. They chased it, and ran from it, and scratched behind its ears with the tirelessness that could only belong to someone for whom a dog was novelty itself. Such unbounded, artless enjoyment, their every merry shout causing her to feel more like some ogress in a fairy-story. Plotting to make a meal of innocent children who came to the wrong house.

“May I ask you something, Mrs. Russell?” And then there was their mother, a timid shadow of a woman half-apologizing for everything she dared to say. Her pale blue eyes didn’t meet Martha’s but stayed steady on the boys. “You spoke to my husband this morning, I think. Was anything the matter?”

Gravity gathered in the pit of her stomach, tugging mercilessly at her heart. She pressed her lips together. “Nothing of consequence. Only I wished to make him known to some neighbors.”

“I see. Thank you.” Mrs. James Russell asked no further questions.

The woman would be no better off for knowing the truth. One must push pity aside, and forge ahead. Perhaps Mr. Atkins was even now convincing Mr. James Russell to reform. She would think of that, and surely it would ease the sense of poison creeping through her veins and corrupting her flesh.

T
HE CURATE
met her on her return to the house, with such a look of priestly satisfaction that she could guess at his news. “You’ve talked him into leaving.”

“It was Mrs. Weaver did that.” He smiled, all generous modesty, as he pulled on his coat. “But I helped him, I hope, to conceive of the move as a principled withdrawal rather than a cowardly retreat.”

“He listened to you, then?”

“I flatter myself he may have done. I don’t expect him to take orders any time soon. But a sympathetic ear can work wonders for a man in such a state.” He started down the hall and she walked with him. She still had her shawl; she could accompany him a bit of the way outside. “We’ve all done our wrongs, on whatever scale, and to be faced with them, when you may think you’ve left them behind, is a severe trial for any man.”

“You’ll pardon me if I save my sympathy for the women against whom the wrongs were done.”

“No one can fault you for that.” He inclined his head as they passed through the front door.

A thought came uninvited: what if she faced a tribunal, some sixteen years hence, like that Mr. James Russell had undergone today? Not with neighbors round the table but with the two Russell sons calling her out for fraud, lying, and adultery?
I had good reasons
, she would say.
It was all for the benefit of someone else
. But her reasons might be nothing to the wronged parties.

And would she convince anyone with the bit about someone else’s benefit? Heaven help her if they chose to cross-examine. If they brought in Mr. Mirkwood to testify to the truth.

“At all events he says he’ll leave tomorrow. Send for me if you suspect he’s going back on his word.” He put his hands in his coat pockets as a breeze swept in. “Truly, though, I don’t expect you’ll need to. I do believe you’ve come to the end of this business.”

“Yes.” She wrapped her fingers in the folds of her shawl. “I suppose I’ve finally reached the end indeed.”

T
HEO CAME
in that night to find five candles burning, and Mrs. Russell sitting up. She’d waited for him.

“I’d say that meeting was a resounding success, wouldn’t you?” He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it on the armchair before going to sit at the foot of her bed. Likely she’d want to relive this morning in all its glory.

She nodded, her hair gleaming in the soft light and shifting about her muslin-clothed shoulders. “The Russells are leaving tomorrow.” She didn’t smile.

No mystery in this subdued manner. She never had entirely reconciled herself to cheating those boys, and her heart still grieved for their mother.

He shifted higher up the bed and picked up her hands to clasp in his own. “Don’t doubt yourself. Think of the servants you’ve kept safe. The ones you’ve avenged. Think of the neighborhood’s general good.”