An Unnatural Daughter: A Dark Regency Mystery (4 page)

She fell silent, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. I felt strongly, with every fibre of my being, that if I had been lucky enough to be the object of Tristan’s affections, I would never have committed myself to another man. And yet, if I did, as in my wildest dreams, capture his affections, I would have to be the one who left him. I was confused, and hated almost everything and everyone in the world. Especially myself.

‘But we needn’t be so maudlin – look at me, coming in here to cheer you up and almost setting myself to sobbing! He’s fine now. I worried for so long, but he’s moved on. How are you feeling anyway, Alice? Your head looks much better today.’

I told her I was feeling almost back to normal, just tired still, and she seemed pleased. I wondered that she never asked me what I would do once I was better. I felt as though there was an unspoken invitation that I would stay with her indefinitely, but she surely wouldn’t want that.

‘And have you remembered anything else? I don’t want to pressure you, and I’m sure your memory will come back as soon as it wants to, but it’s a magnificent mystery.’

‘Nothing much,’ I said, avoiding her eye. ‘Bits of my childhood, really. My father – I lived with him, and my mother died when I was born. I don’t think I’d really forgotten those things though.’

‘But nothing of how you came to be out on the road that night?’

I shook my head.

‘No, and no names or places of where I lived. I’m so sorry. I hate to be an imposition.’ I felt so guilty I began to cry. The hot tears stung my eyes but I couldn’t wipe them away as my hands were occupied in twisting my skirts into thick ropes. In my anguish, I considered that I was creating the means to hang myself. The skin of my palms began to burn and I released the fabric, my fingers trembling slightly as I focussed all of my energy into keeping control of myself.

I deserved none of their kindness, and in return I was just lying to them and allowing them to harbour a wanted murderer.

‘Now then, no need to worry, dear.’ Edwina glided over onto the sofa and took me in her arms. ‘It must be so difficult for you, and I want you to know you can stay as long as you like. As far as I’m concerned, it’s so nice having someone young around the place I don’t mind if you stay forever. All I’m worried about is you having a family out there who miss you and are scared about what’s happened to you.’

After a few minutes of sobbing into her shoulder, I managed to calm my tears, and felt an awful lot better, even though I knew I shouldn’t.

‘My feet are nearly better now, and my head doesn’t hurt half so much as it used to,’ I told her. ‘So please – let me make myself useful. There must be something I can do to repay you.’

Edwina looked at me closely, and I worried for a moment she would refuse me.

‘Well,’ she said at length, ‘the garden could do with a tidy. I don’t have the knees for weeding any more, and Jane’s far too busy to spare any time for upkeep. Tristan tries, bless him, but I hate to tear him away from his painting. I do what I can, but it’s getting a little beyond me – even the herb garden.’

‘Could I?’ I had longed for a garden, even while my mind had been too preoccupied with other things to register that longing. Tending to the cottage garden would be heaven.

‘It seems to me that it would be the perfect solution.’

The day was sunny but cool, so I carefully climbed the stairs in search of a wrapper. Edwina offered to fetch me one, but I felt that wouldn’t really be the best way to start my repaying her kindness, by having her do yet more for me.

I passed Tristan on the stairs, a smudge of paint on his face and his blonde hair escaping the ribbon he had tied at his neck. He bounded down the stairs like I’ve seen dogs lope across fields. I pressed myself against the wall as he passed me, not least to keep my balance. He threw a smile in my direction as he strode into the kitchen, calling out to Edwina about sandwiches.

He had left the door to his studio wide open, and as I passed on the way to my own room, I could not help but look in. The overall impression was one of mess, with dust sheets and paint cans and brushes strewn all over the floor, yet it was a clean mess. All the cans were tightly closed, and the brushes were, if not pristine, clean and their bristles were unmatted.

From the doorway I could see the corners of piles of paper, and a table with a few broken twigs of charcoal scattered across the surface. I looked down the stairs and strained my ears for sounds of movement. Then I went in.

The light was peculiar, I suppose because there was nowhere else in the house quite like it. While the studio, like the sitting room, faced over the garden, its height meant that it wasn’t shaded by the trees. The light was pure sunlight, white as anything, and set the whitewashed walls to gleaming. The room was massive, running almost the entire length of the house, and I could see how Tristan found the space to pace and stamp about.

I shuffled carefully towards the stack of papers, and once I had rounded the door I saw that they stood before a large canvas, empty but for a few streaks of green. Like grasses, they darted across the white space, seeming almost to shimmer against the bright nothingness, reflecting the ripples of the distant trees. I looked at the canvas for a moment, trying to understand it. By being in Tristan’s space, where he created this work I was yet to see, I hoped that I could somehow know him a little. But there was only grass. I could not know him by his grass, could not glean anything of his feelings towards life, towards his lost love, towards me.

A pile of sketchbooks stood in the corner, haphazardly leaning against the wall. My eye lingered there, staring hard as though I could see inside without even opening them. I longed, with a fervour I could hardly bear, to look inside. But I could not. It was engrained too deeply. I could not pry. To look in a room without touching anything, I reasoned, was acceptable. It was when you looked more closely that people got angry. It was when you opened things, like drawers or books, that you crossed an invisible line. The line that separated right and wrong.

Despite being, by my own reasoning, on the correct side of that line as I stood in the middle of the floor, several feet from anything remotely private, I knew I had to leave without being found. I wanted to tear from the room, to obliterate any marks I might have made in the dust, any tracks I had left in the air. Tristan would return, I fancied, and see the mess I had made of the air, and how I had disturbed the lint that floated in the sunlight. I edged backwards, remembering all too late about the creaking floorboards. It was a metre to the door. It felt like a mile.

When I reached the safety of the hallway, once the initial rush of relief had passed and I looked back to see no evidence of my intrusion, I realised that I was cold and sweating. I hated myself. I hated how I couldn’t control my own mind, and that I didn’t know if it was right to have felt so scared only moments before, or if it had been a normal reaction to feel as I did, and to panic. The house creaked around me suddenly, the sound echoing around the hall, up and down the stairs. The house knew what I had done.

I hurried to my room and clutched my wrapper, my heart beating heavily. How long had I even been in Tristan’s studio? Seconds, perhaps, but it felt like minutes or even hours were equally possible. I forced myself to breathe slowly. The murmur of voices from downstairs filtered up through my open door. I realised that they had been going on the whole time, probably, and nobody suspected anything. They didn’t care. The house creaked again. I fairly ran down the stairs and out into the garden.

While I still leant heavily on Edwina’s cane, it hadn’t rained in a few days and the ground was firm enough that it didn’t sink in. Edwina brought me an old cushion to kneel on and I was relieved that she seemed perfectly pleasant, and not at all angry with me for trespassing in Tristan’s studio, as surely she would have been. In my gratitude I set to work immediately, thinning the plants on one of the circular plots that were sunk into the lawn. With my fingernails filled with soil and my hands stained with green, I felt alive, and young again. I hadn’t realised how aging the events of the past two weeks had been. I slowly worked my way around the border, delighting in the smell of the earth and the gentle breeze that stirred the leaves.

‘You look happy.’

Tristan had seen me from his studio window earlier and had, to my delight and relief, waved. About twenty minutes later he wandered out to talk to me, all long legs, golden hair and unrequited love.

‘I like gardening. And it’s nice to help Edwina – and you. As thanks.’

I couldn’t look at him, but I felt the smile in his voice.

‘It stops me doing it, so I’m doubly grateful. Do you think you had a garden then- before?’

‘Yes. A bit like this one, I think. How’s your work going?’

Tristan flopped himself down onto the grass beside me and began idly stroking the thick, waxy castor oil leaves in front of him.

‘It stops and starts. I’m trying to paint Mother Nature, but she just keeps looking like my mother, and that isn’t what I’m after at all. Mother’s far too clean. I think she’s an indoors sort of person, whereas you, you look sort of foresty.’

‘Foresty?’ I stared across at him in surprise, and found he was laughing. It was so preposterous, I couldn’t help but join in.

‘Of the forest, then. It’s not so ridiculous. You get people who look like they spend their whole day in the library, and we call them bookish – surely it’s not so outlandish that you could be foresty? Or forestish?’

‘I suppose not.’ I desperately wanted to ask him what he meant, but dared not be so outspoken.

‘Well, you have dark hair – very dark, and I daresay you’d look rather good in a darkish, vine green.’

I laughed again, sure he was teasing me.

‘So my hair is the colour of mud and I’d look well as a tree. Very kind, sir.’

Tristan reached over and covered my hand with his.

‘You don’t know how to take a compliment.’

I looked at him uneasily, not knowing how I felt at such close contact. I didn’t know how improper it would be considered in polite society, and besides, I wasn’t sure whether the feeling in my stomach was revulsion at being touched by a man after what had happened with my husband, or something entirely opposite.

‘I don’t know how to find one.’ I laughed nervously, and he moved his hand from mine. I think I was glad. It was a lot less complicated when he wasn’t touching me.

Tristan smiled and shifted so he wasn’t sitting so close to me. I worried I had offended him somehow but he rolled onto his back and lay down to stare at the sky. I hid my fluttering hands by delving them into the bushes.

‘Would it be awful,’ he said after a long silence, ‘if I asked you to sit for me?’

‘To sit?’ I hadn’t heard of that as being a special thing before. I was sitting right at that moment, but I supposed it was for my benefit – but what would be the point in sitting for him?

‘To pose. For me to draw you.’

‘Oh.’ What an uncultured fool I was!

‘Clothed, of course,’ he added quickly.

I felt myself go red all over. I hadn’t even considered that. Then I started giggling. It was a nervous giggle, but once I started, he joined in. Then it turned into a proper laugh, and before long we were roaring like children and he was rolling on the grass and clutching his stomach. I cried for the second time that day, and it felt so, so good.

‘What a mull I made of that,’ Tristan panted as the laugher finally subsided. ‘I’d quite understand if you never wanted to speak to me again after that, never mind if you refused to sit for me.’

‘It did sound quite debauched.’ I said with a smile, ‘but I see it wasn’t meant to. If you’re sure I’d do, I’d be more than happy to help you.’

Tristan rolled onto his side and leant his head on his hand.

‘I think you’d be just what I need. I’ll consider how I’d want you, and then we can talk about it. Actually, I’m going to get my sketchbook, if you don’t mind. I’d like to get some lines down to get a few ideas.’

‘As I work?’

‘You wouldn’t need to do anything, just ignore me. It’d only be so I can get an idea of your, erm, figure.’ Tristan blushed again and we both giggled.

I agreed and he returned to the house to get his things. I idly watched his shadow moving behind the reflections in the windows of his studio. The sun dipped behind a cloud and I saw the shock of his pale hair as he moved. Then a movement from the other side of the house caught my eye. Another figure appeared at one of the windows. I knew him instantly. It was my stranger. Everything was well. I smiled, and could have sworn he smiled back, before the sun and the clouds moved again, and he disappeared. I watched the windows until Tristan came back, but didn’t see my stranger again.

It was an odd feeling, being drawn. I tried to act normally, but I couldn’t remember what I normally did. All my movements seemed wooden, and try as I might, I couldn’t forget that he was watching me. I knew my face was marred by the bruises and scabs on my forehead, but I worried over what else Tristan would see. When you looked at anything for a long time, you began to see imperfections.

He would notice the freckles that covered my cheeks in the sun, the bump in the bridge of my nose and the scar on my top lip from a bad spot I’d had two years before. What other visible scars were there? My arms were covered and the worst of the bruises had faded from there, but my back and ribs were still dotted with bruises and scratches. I was glad my hair was down to hide the deep scratches on my neck that seemed to be taking weeks to heal.