A Woman of Consequence (31 page)

‘Lucy told me once,’ continued Dido, becoming more serious, ‘that Penelope remembered her mother bending over her cradle when she was a baby. Of course, that was impossible. Penelope’s mother died when she was born. It was, in fact, Harriet’s face she remembered. The face of the young Harriet. It was the first face she learnt to love. And it was that face which was suddenly revealed to the poor girl here on the gallery that day – a ghost indeed!’

She looked up at him eagerly. But his profile was dark
against the bright sky, framed by an arch of grey stone. She wished very much that she might know just what he was thinking, for the moment was come … She could no longer delay telling him of her decision.

‘Mr Lomax,’ she said quietly, ‘you asked me just now whether I meant to do anything to bring justice about. Well, I would not wish you to think that I am motivated only by an insatiable curiosity. I do care deeply for what is right and I do certainly mean to bring about justice.’ She hesitated. ‘I mean to bring about a woman’s justice.’

He looked at her uncertainly. ‘And how does that differ from a man’s?’

‘It is humane,’ she said, ‘and concerns itself not with agreements drawn up to impoverish women for the enrichment of their male relations; it concerns itself instead with the plight of a girl sent away from her home to grow up among strangers simply because she was not the boy that everyone wished her to be.’

‘You are referring I suppose to Miss Lambe.’

‘Yes. Penelope must be allowed to come home,’ she said with great decision.

‘Must she? And how is that to be achieved?’

‘In the simplest, most natural way possible. All that is needed is for Harriet to cease opposing Silas’s wishes and Penelope will come home to Ashfield as his bride. I have conditioned for it, you see. I have told Harriet I will only surrender the silver buttons to her on their wedding day.’

He gazed steadily at her for several minutes. Sunlight and the shadows of leaves shifted across his face as the wind blew about the hanging curtain of ivy. ‘And this,’ he said, ‘is your notion of justice?’

‘Yes it is.’ She drew a long breath. ‘And, I believe that when you consider how different – how very different – it is from yours … I think you will agree that …’ She looked away quickly. ‘I think you will agree that our opinions upon some very important subjects will always differ – that they never can be reconciled.’

‘Because you will always argue like a woman?’

‘And you will always argue like a man.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Your notion of a woman’s sphere distinct and separate from a man’s was all too correct, Mr Lomax. I believe our experiment was, from the first, doomed to failure because there is an established barrier – a kind of chasm – between men and women which our words can never cross.’

‘And there must of course be words?’ he said raising one eyebrow.

‘Oh yes,’ she insisted – and the quiet propriety of the previous Mrs Lomax was very much in her mind as she spoke. ‘I am afraid that for me there must always be words. I never could exist in silence – and that I fear makes me essentially unsuited to the state of matrimony.’

He stood brooding for a very long time. And she waited, her gloved hands resting upon the ancient stones of the gallery’s balustrade, her eyes fixed upon a bright beech tree in the park from which showers of leaves were being blown against the sky. She half-regretted their doomed experiment – it had perhaps made her understand herself too well.

‘I believe,’ said Lomax slowly at last, ‘that there is a fault in your reasoning.’ She looked up and saw that the tips of his fingers were just pressing against one another. ‘I will
not dispute the existence of such a divide,’ he said. ‘Its presence has recently been too painfully obtruded upon my notice for me to doubt its reality. Yet I continue to believe that – were you to do me the honour of becoming my wife – we could be happy together. For, though our words may not cross that divide, I believe our affection might.’

‘No,’ she shook her head wretchedly. ‘It would not, Mr Lomax. It could not. For affection would all be lost in irritation and anger.’

‘And what is your evidence for that position?’

‘The evidence of a dozen wretched marriages within my knowledge in which argument and disapproval has soured regard and destroyed all vestige of confidence.’

He shook his head. ‘No, I will not allow you to put forward other marriages as proof. They can reveal nothing to the purpose, for I believe that the present case is entirely different. In this particular instance the evidence is against you.’

‘Oh! Are we so very different from other men and women?’

‘Perhaps we are. Witness our recent dispute,’ he said, resting his chin on his fingers. ‘We certainly cannot agree upon what is just – and I think that we never will. The courses of action which we think proper differ widely.’

‘Exactly so!’

‘And you have been aware of this dissimilarity in outlook since our last interview in Bath, have you not?’

‘Yes.’

‘And yet, just now, when I asked you to share with me the story of last night’s discoveries, you did not hesitate
– once I had assured you that I would endeavour not to express my anger.’

‘No, why should I hesitate?’

‘Why, because my contrary ideas of justice might have prompted me to approach the coroner myself with the information you gave me.’

‘But I knew you would not!’

‘How did you know?’ he said, studying her face very earnestly. ‘You did not condition for my silence before you began to speak.’

‘I did not need to,’ she cried. ‘I knew that you would never betray me, no matter what you thought.’

He smiled. She began to catch his meaning and quickly turned her face away.

‘And upon that confidence,’ he said quietly, ‘upon that trust, I rest my argument – and all my hopes of future happiness.’ He reached out and laid his hand over hers. ‘You see, Miss Kent, there is another force at work here besides our words. You and I know – we will always know – that we can trust one another implicitly; and I firmly believe that that trust
can
bridge the divide which lies between us.’

Dido kept her eyes fixed upon the great arch of the ruined window, and upon a black chattering flock of starlings as it was blown about the sky. She could not look at him, nor could she very readily find a reply among the crowding sensations which his words had produced. But very slowly she turned the hand which lay under his. And at last their hands rested palm to palm on the ivy-covered wall. Then, one by one, their fingers interlinked. Their grasp tightened, warm and steady in the icy wind. 

A
NNA
D
EAN
lives in the Lake District with a husband and a cat. She sometimes works as a Creative Writing tutor and as a guide showing visitors around William Wordsworth’s home, Dove Cottage. Her interests include walking, old houses, Jane Austen, cream teas,
Star Trek
and canoeing on very flat water.

www.annadean.co.uk
 

T
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D
IDO
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SERIES

A Moment of Silence

A Gentleman of Fortune

A Woman of Consequence

‘Beautifully written. Characters one cares about immediately and a mystery which becomes more urgent with every page’ Anne Perry, author of the Inspector Pitt novels

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