Born of Persuasion (12 page)

I nodded, trying to ignore the strange manner in which Mr. Greenham watched me. Unknown to most, I still retained Mama’s emeralds—the heart of a priceless collection, or so Sarah said. Each piece—hair circlet, necklace, bracelet, brooch, and varying other pieces—was matched with peerless diamonds. The value of the set was so great, Mama never dared to even wear so much as one ring.

“A verbal agreement, child. Do not leave our witnesses, John and Elizabeth, in doubt. Do you agree to my first term?”

I felt like a girl in a fairy tale making a bargain with a witch. “Yes.”

Elizabeth made a choking noise while Mr. Greenham turned his attention to his cup.

“Good. Now for my next term. Nothing would induce me to present you to a person of consequence looking as such. Your garb is positively ghastly. You must start wearing color again.”

“Oh, honestly,” Elizabeth burst into our conversation. “You cannot expect her to defy society on your orders. Besides, this entire conversation is irrelevant. Julia is under her guardian’s protection, and he’d never allow any of this.”

“Guardian?” Lady Foxmore arched her eyebrows. “Who, child? I shall write this person.”

After glaring at Elizabeth, I shook my head. “I know not. He wishes to remain anonymous.”

“Rubbish.” Lady Foxmore swept the air with her hand. “Anyone who refuses to reveal himself is hiding something and will not dare interfere with our plans. Had he been worthy in the first place, he never would have even allowed a visit to the Windhams. The next time I lay eyes on you, child, I expect you out of those ridiculous rags.” She held up a hand, though I’d made no attempt to interrupt her. “I gather you have no funds, but you’ll have to find a way to manage. I’m offering you a husband beyond the compass of your imagination. I expect to see a bit of fortitude on your part. Sell that locket if necessary. Just find a way.”

My finger sought out the heavy, gold locket around my neck. Inside was a painted ivory of Mama and my father.

“She’s not selling her locket.” Elizabeth rose alongside her voice. “Nor is she going to allow you to choose her a husband! Do you honestly think she’ll risk her reputation? We all know the rumors surrounding you, how more than one young lady in your charge has disappeared only to reappear after a questionable length of time, her middle thicker, never to marry.”

Instead of appearing offended, Lady Foxmore looked rather amused. Her head trembled as she tried to hold still. “Am I to blame when young girls mishandle the freedom I give them?”

Elizabeth turned and gathered her shawl from her chair. “Come, Julia. We’re leaving this conversation right now.”

I fastened my gaze on a crackled ivory vase holding waxed roses.

“Julia?” Elizabeth sounded panicked this time.

When I sat unmoving, she picked up her skirts and hied to the door, her petticoats rustling. I envisioned her finding Henry. Doubtless by nightfall, Edward would learn what had transpired this afternoon, but I no longer cared.

“Do you accept my second condition?” Lady Foxmore asked.

My throat felt strained, so I nodded but then remembered it had to be verbal. “Yes.”

“But she’s not selling her locket,” Mr. Greenham said in a firm voice.

“So, you are capable of speech.” Lady Foxmore shifted to view him. “Good heavens, John, if you must make noise, wait and test your conversational skills on someone else. I do not like interruptions, especially from men who normally refuse to speak.”

He set his untouched cup of tea aside and sat forward. After divesting his waistcoat of a pocketbook, he pulled out several pound notes. “I believe this should suffice for a new wardrobe, yes?”

“You know I cannot accept that,” I said, staring at the notes. “No lady can acce—”

“Make no mistake, Miss Elliston,” Lady Foxmore said. “We are no longer working within society’s confines. If you wish to marry a husband on the top rung, you may find yourself compromising in many ways—”

“No.” My throat grew even tighter. “There are some things I shall never do.”

“Nor shall you be asked to,” Mr. Greenham said through gritted teeth, glaring at Lady Foxmore. “Upon my oath, nothing shall be required of you which you are unwilling to do. If I may be allowed, let me restate my offer. Would you honor me by permitting me to purchase your locket? I shall retain it until you are capable of purchasing it back again.”

“That’s hardly showing fortitude on her part, John.”

A vein in his neck emerged. “This is no game, and—”

“Temper, temper,” Lady Foxmore said in a singsong voice.

His eyes flashed with a look of sheer rage, but unlike my father he found a place in which to tuck it away. He turned back to me in full control of himself and extended the banknotes. “Will you honor me by accepting my offer?”

THE NIGHT FOLLOWING my pact with Lady Foxmore, a smattering of pebbles bounced off the shutters, puncturing my dreams. I opened my eyes, realizing the sound had been incorporated into my last few minutes of sleep.

Another round of pebbles skidded across the wood.

Of all that had happened since my arrival at Am Meer, this sickened me the most, for I knew it was Edward. I guessed he’d learned about my visit with Lady Foxmore.

I wanted nothing more than for Edward to leave, but I knew him too well. If he wanted an audience, he’d stop at nothing short of plowing through the thatched roof.

Brushing aside the locks of hair cascading over my eyes, I threw back the covers and hastily donned my wrapper. Ignoring the ache in my legs from the long walk to Lady Foxmore’s residence, I went to the window and threw open the shutters.

Clouds obscured the sky, but light from the waxing moon still served as an illuminant. Drizzle hazed over the withered vines and the rosebushes that had been cut back for the approaching winter.

Dressed in his cassock, Edward was bending over, retrieving more pebbles, but it was what came next that froze my blood. His elbow suddenly protruded from his shadowed form, and he both staggered and wiped his eyes. A sob rent the silence as he stumbled in his quest for more stones.

Intoxicated?

I drew in a breath of cold air. Experience had taught me men never sobbed except when drunk—and volatile. I clutched the windowsill, fearing not the violence Edward might be capable of, but his tongue. Sober, he was a gentleman and would never allow his words to cut, but drunk . . . ?

He straightened to strike my window again, but upon catching sight of me, his hand dropped and pebbles fell from it.

“Come down,” he ordered, and then plodded toward the ancient oak.

My feet were stone as silence engulfed the night. It was foolishness to confront Edward in this state of mind. But I detested my own fear. I had sworn to never again feel weak, to never again cower before another’s temper. Glancing up at the cloudy sky, I wondered how many times Mama had stood thus, cold tingling through her fingers as she summoned courage to confront my father. Yet she had always gone. Her face granite, her heart marble, she always went.

Gathering fortitude from her memory, I left the window to find slippers. I crept from my room and down the hall, where I shushed the dogs that stirred beneath the bench where the hall boy slept.

Outdoors, I made my way to the spinney, which at night seemed primeval. Gossamer webs clung to my hands and robe as I groped through the darkness. The marshy ground seeped into my shoes, causing my toes to ache with the chill. The scents invading the air were not those of my childhood meetings with Edward—but carried the foul odor of a bog.

Under a bower of our oak tree, I stopped and crossed my
arms, no longer fearing the woods or Edward’s coming wrath. Drizzle rustled the leaves above me as mist coiled about my ankles.

I felt Edward’s presence before I saw him.

“Look at me,” he commanded from behind.

I obeyed, twisting to see over my shoulder, certain that defiance must be written over my every feature. Though it was dark, I saw him—and knew he saw me—although nebulously. Damp curls rested against his pale face. His countenance gave the impression he’d returned from the scene of a great tragedy.

“You went to her?” His cry was impassioned with pain, his voice hoarse. “You entered into an agreement for her to arrange a marriage?”

I said nothing as he circled to the front of me, though my stomach hollowed with the realization there was no stench of ale upon his breath.

“What of us, Juls? Why drag me to that godforsaken dinner if you had no intention of acceding to our betrothal?”

I tightened my wrapper, narrowing my eyes at him.

“What?” he shouted. “Are you going to deny that, too? We were never engaged? Was it not this very spot!”

“No,” I slowly said in a tone that Sarah would have called quarrelsome. “I do not deny that we
were
engaged, only that you intend to honor the commitment.”

He emitted a growling sound. “I’m not the one who walked away from here and never came back. It’s been three years, Julia!” His bellowing caused birds to take noisy flight from their trees. “You’re the one who refused to visit after learning I intended to enter the church. You’re the one who couldn’t stand to look upon me in my vestments. You’re the one petitioning others to find you a husband.”

“That wasn’t me! That was Mama! And we didn’t even know you intended to enter the church. But it was
you
who betrayed us.
You.
You knew what the church did to my family.”

“Not the church. One man, one vicar. You know nothing about what you’re rejecting alongside me. You’re ruining our lives because of the actions of one person. One!”

“Do not presume to lecture me. You knew you were severing all relations with us. Well, take your accursed church. Take it and go. I no longer want you.”

His eyes blazed as intensity marked his features. Until that moment I never noticed he stood a full head taller than myself, for he’d always seemed exactly my height. “Fine.” He ground the words out. “Do not expect me to come grovelling at your next beck and call. May you find what you deserve with Lady Foxmore. She’s as false as you are.”

Turning his back to me, he stalked off into the ebon shadows.

I did not move, my face still twisted in anger and my body heated from our exchange. To an outsider, I might have appeared unmoved, untouched by the scene. But in truth, I struggled not to fragment into irrecoverable pieces.

I’d never told anyone, but conjuring Edward in my mind had helped me survive Mama’s burial. While gravediggers dug the cold, wet earth, I’d stood in the rain, listening to their shovels chink against the bones of the excommunicated, trying to callous myself that in a few years hence Mama would likewise be disinterred to make room in the crowded yard.

The apothecary, Mr. Hollis, stuttering and turning various shades of red, had advised me to attend the body until the very end—here he’d been obliged to remove his spectacles and wipe them—because without my presence, someone might show their reverence to the church by taking their fury out on Mama’s coffin, as they had my father’s. The risk of her body being seen was too high.

For hours I ignored the reek of corpses by pretending Edward’s strong hand cupped my elbow. To drown out the gravediggers’ cursing, I’d made up encouraging words which Edward might have whispered in my ear.

That night, as I stood bareheaded in that dismal, dripping bower, memory of Mama’s burial found me anew. The heartache I’d refused to make room for suddenly rose up, seizing me. Warm tears blended on my cheek with the cold rain. It was a strange breaking, to grieve that something imaginary wasn’t real.

We are not meant to take gnawing pain and cocoon it inside, for the ache only grows. That first sob rent its silk envelope, releasing the reservoir of tears. Rare are the moments when we purge the anguish of our souls. There is nothing dainty or feminine about it. Harsh, bestial sobs wracked my body as I sank to the ground, finally acknowledging my loss.

I keened as I hadn’t yet—for the loss of Mama, the loss of Sarah, the loss of who I believed Edward to be, and the future I once pursued.

“Juls.” Arms wrapped me from behind as Edward knelt, gathering me from the marshy ground to settle me against his chest. “Do not weep,” his voice lulled as he cradled me. “Forgive me; I meant it not.”

But all I could see was Mama’s dead face. I was reliving those numb, horrible moments of realizing she was gone, the harrowing silence of the house, and the necessity of locking away all emotion.

“Do not.” Edward pulled me closer against him. “Do not.”

Was I weak? Was it wrong? I clutched the back of his cassock as I sobbed against his sinewy chest. His clothing smelled like smoke, not the sooty scent of a coal fire, but of burning wood. It felt real and earthy—not bound in the past, but something present and alive.

Edward spoke into my hair, murmuring comforting words and pleas that I collect myself.

But I would weep until energy was spent, until I’d cried so hard my breathing refused to regulate itself.

“Be calm. Take slow breaths,” Edward whispered to me. “It will pass.”

All around us, rain tapped on the rustling trees above and on the slick ground. By the time my gasping subsided enough that I could distinguish the sounds, my nightgown was soaked, my eyes and throat burned.