Outcasts (31 page)

“To give me?” Byron frowned. “I do not take your meaning. Do you want to give me a story?”

Shelley's head turned, his eyes met Mary's with an alarmed look. He stepped forward to put a hand on Claire's arm, but Mary waved him back. If this was the moment her step-sister had chosen, let her carry it through, she thought.

“I have more than a story to give you, Albé. I have that which no man can give you, no matter how educated, no matter how polished his prose.”

Byron blanched. “I do not take your meaning, Claire.”

“I am with child.”

If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion. The love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and I shall become a thing of whose existence every one will be ignorant.

—Frankenstein,
Volume II,
Chapter XXI

T
here was a
long silence, and then Byron said, very deliberately, “So. What is that to me?”

Mary winced.

Claire gasped. “But … it is yours! We have made a child, together.”

“So you say. I do not even know it is mine.”

Claire's hand flew to her throat. “Oh, you do not mean that, I know you do not! You know I was a virgin when I came to you. You will not deny it!”

“Mayhap you were, when you came to me,” Byron flung at her. “But since? For all I know, it is Shelley's. Half the world believes you are already his mistress, with your sister.”

Mary felt it like a blow to her middle; her ears rang. So even Byron suspected…!

“—take care of your responsibilities!” Claire nearly screamed.

“My responsibilities? My dear, I am not agreed that it is mine at all.”

“Is this all I am to you?” Claire blazed. “That all our times together, when we have had such bliss—”

“Bliss? Are you actually going to use that word? I have had bliss, as you call it, from my own valet and chambermaid that surpassed any passages we may have—”

“You lie! You are trying to tease me out of my temper!”

“I assure you, Claire, my chambermaid has more experience and better—”

“Byron! Let us speak aside—” Shelley said.

Claire overrode him, blazing at Byron. “Oh, do not take me for a fool! I know your teasing ways. I know you, your passions, your night terrors. I know how you sob in your sleep—”

No, thought Mary. Don't remind him of his vulnerabilities, not now. Beside her, Polidori stared from Byron to Claire, an embarrassed look on his face.

“Only at the thought that you are with me,” Byron's voice was hard. “Do not quarrel with me, Claire. I will win. You know it. You know you cannot rage me out of a decision.”

Shelley stepped forward, a look of concern on his face. “Albé. Claire. This is not—”

“This is no business of yours, Shiloh!” Byron flung at him.

“What will become of your son?” Claire said, and Mary heard the fight for control in her voice. “Will you abandon this child as you abandoned your daughter?”

Byron drew a deep breath. “You are trying to drive me mad,” he snarled. “Between metaphysics, mountains, lakes and love inextinguishable, and the nightmare of my own delinquencies.”

“You love me. I know you do. And love is enough, is it not? Oh, you, who have loved in such passion, with such depth, I know that you will see this child as our love's own signature.”

“More like its period. It is the end of any love I bore you.”

Mary clenched her fists, afraid that interfering would drive Claire to some new foolishness.

Polidori said feebly, “Miss Clairmont—” but no one paid him any attention.

“You cannot mean that,” Claire said. Her voice held anger, still, but Mary also heard an undertone of fear. “I cannot believe you mean any of it.”

“You exasperate me, madame,” Byron said. “You persist, in the face of all evidence, in telling me what I do or do not mean. I assure you, I mean every word.”

“Albé, George, please—”

“Never call me that.” Byron's voice was cold and contemptuous. “Never, ever, call me by my Christian name. You will never be intimate enough for that.”

“I shall call you coward and traitor before I am done!” Claire's voice rang out. “You will listen to me! You must, you will acknowledge me and this child!”

“Madame, make any claim you care to. Think you, after what I have endured in England, from my own wife no less, that any scandal from you shall touch me?”

“Care you nothing for your own child?”

“Should I care more for a by-blow than my own legitimate daughter, got on a legitimate wife?” he snarled in return.

“Not yet,” Claire said. “Not while I carry this child.”

“It is not mine!” Byron cried, and now Mary heard a note of despair in his voice. “Do you know how many bratlings are laid to my door?

“I love you, yet you do not feel even interest for me. Fate has ordained that the slightest accident that should befall you should be agony to me, but were I to float by your window drowned, all you would say would be ‘Ah, voilà!'”

Eyes blazing, Byron shot back, “Shall we try it? Here is the lake, handy enough. Fletcher shall hold you under, and I shall examine my feelings as you drift with the tide.”

“Byron!” Shelley put his arm around Claire. “This will solve nothing! Claire, you must calm yourself, and Byron, you must be reasonable!”

Claire burst into tears and fled through the doors to the terrace, slamming them behind her. Polidori struggled to his feet, to go after her. Mary laid a hand on his shoulder and shook her head; he subsided into his seat but whispered, “She will take a chill!”

Mary approached Byron, who was staring into the fire, storms in his face.

“That was not well done, Albé,” she said. “She is not lying to you. She would not.”

Shelley came up with a glass of brandy in his hand and shoved it at Byron. “I am persuaded you are too good a man to desert her, and your own child,” he said quietly. “Would you have it raised, as you were, with no father?”

Byron looked from Shelley to Mary. “Damn you both.” He
took the glass and tossed the brandy back as easily as if it were water. “And damn her to hell.” He wiped his face with his hand. “I never loved her. I never told her I loved her. I made it plain, my God how could I make it plainer? She was nothing to me. Is nothing to me.”

“You felt nothing for her? No sentiment at all?” Shelley sounded astonished.

Byron's laugh rang bitterly in the room. “Oh, Saint Shelley is it? You will debauch both of Godwin's daughters, but shy at lifting a light skirt?”

Polidori gasped.

Shelley took no offense, but shook his head. “There is more than mere sexual connection at risk here, my friend. You are casting off your very own flesh.”

“And has it not been rent from me, often enough?” Byron raged suddenly. He flung the empty glass into the fireplace, where it shattered. “One child taken by the judge, another never to be—” He stopped himself, choking a little. He leaned both arms on the fireplace. “Now I am presented with this … by-blow. This unwanted baggage. You have no qualms about adopting orphans right and left, Shelley. Why don't you take it?” He straightened, turned, and looked Shelley in the eye. “After all, it might be yours.”

“No, no,” Shelley said mildly. “If Claire says it is yours, it is yours. You may rely on it.” He looked at Mary. “Perhaps you should see to Claire, while I talk to Byron.”

“It will do you no good,” said his lordship. “None at all.”

Shaken by the anger of the scene, Byron's sharp temper, his sudden violence, Mary hurried to find Claire. As soon as she flung open the door to the terrace, the rain slapped her in the face, cold as ice.

“Claire!”

“Go away!” Claire leaned against the railing as if she would throw herself off of it. The rain had soaked her to the skin. Her thin muslin dress was completely transparent.

“Dearest, you must come in out of the rain,” Mary said. She wiped the rain from her eyes, feeling her hair go sodden and limp.

“No. Leave me.” Despite the violence of her words, Claire's voice was leaden, lifeless. “I want to go home.”

“Impossible, Claire. Come inside.”

Claire trembled, either from the cold or emotion or both. “I do not want to go back in there with him.”

“You are past that now,” Mary said. “Like it or not, you are bound to him now by the life you carry. This is something not even Shelley can understand, but I do.”

Claire looked at her out of miserable eyes. “He does not love me.” She said it with wonder, like a child who has discovered her toy is broken, at a loss. “He does not want me.”

Mary forbore to say “I told you so”, and led Claire back into the room.

It was empty, and the door to Byron's study was closed. Mary led her step-sister to the fire. A light foot-blanket was folded across the lounge; she caught it up and wrapped Claire in it. As the girl sat shivering before the fire, Mary yanked on the bell pull. When Fletcher appeared in all his placid solidity, she ordered him to bring hot tea and more blankets. He said nothing, but turned and went.

From behind the study door, Mary heard Byron's voice raised in shrill anger. She heard the quiet murmur of Shelley's words.

When Fletcher brought the tea, she forced the teacup into Claire's hands, and laid more blankets over her. Gradually, Claire stopped shivering, but she continued to stare dully into the fire, saying nothing.

Mary felt sorry for her step-sister, more sorry than she could remember feeling in a long time. Claire, desperate for attention, for purpose in life, had dug the pit she had fallen into.

“You are in despair, now,” Mary said softly. She put her hand on Claire's shoulder. “But you know that Shelley and I, at least, will never desert you.” She felt bitterness at the back of her throat; she did not want to be tied to Claire forever, but what could she do?

“He shares our principles,” Claire said, her voice thick. “He feels as we do, he thinks as we do. And yet he looks only to his own self-interest. All would be well, if he would look to his heart.”

“His heart is forever tied to another,” Mary said gently. “He cannot be with her, and no other will substitute. I do not believe Albé has any more love in himself to give.”

“Yet he lives as though he does,” Claire said. “He flirts and swives and laughs, he makes passionate love to anyone and anything. He is so full of life!”

“He is full of despair,” Mary said. “These are all his masks, put on to hide the scars beneath. He shows the world one face, but inside, he feels that he is dead. Have you not read his poem, ‘Darkness'?”

Claire put a hand on her belly. “He will destroy me. He will destroy the child we have made.” She leaned forward to put her head in her hands. “I want to go home. I want to see Godwin.”

Mary suppressed a bitter laugh. “He would not help you. He, like Shelley and Byron, lives in a dream.”

Claire sat up slowly, looking at her. “A dream?”

“Yes. They live in the mind, they devise principles and theories, they write great poems and books, but the world does not change for them. So they stubbornly live as if the world was as they want it to be, as if by sheer will they could remake it into the society they want. And look what it has got them!” She clenched and unclenched her fists. “Godwin, destitute. Shelley, cut off. Byron, exiled. And always, it is we, the women, who suffer. My mother, who died birthing me. Your mother, turned into a screaming termagant by constant worry. And Byron—how many hearts broken by that man? I swear to you, sometimes I think men are all monsters.”

“But is it not worth the sacrifice?” Claire said. “To perfect humankind, to make the world better, is it not sometimes necessary that some must suffer? Must we not set an example?”

Mary's shoulders sagged.

“Marriage is slavery, Mary. We have seen that, you and I. We have seen two good people, your father and my mother, caught in an endless web of conflict and unhappiness, because they cannot separate.”

“At least Godwin knows better than to throw a woman onto
the street. But why has he cast us off?” Mary said.

“Because we are stronger,” Claire said simply. “We have an education. We have what we need to live independent lives.” She straightened and drew the blankets around her shoulders. “And I must find a way to live an independent life without Byron. With our child.”

Before Mary could formulate a reply, the door to the study opened. Shelley came out first, looking tired. Mary immediately stood and went to him, and took his hand. He bent over and laid his forehead on hers.

Byron strode out, his eyes red, bags under his eyes, his curls all disheveled. “I will accept the child,” he said in a croaking voice. “There will be conditions. We will talk later about its future.”

Claire stood slowly, slipping the blankets from her shoulders. “Thank you,” she said quietly. She locked eyes with Byron, and there was a long silence. “It will need the love of both of us.”

After a long silent moment, Byron turned away. He leaned on the mantel, grabbed a poker and prodded the fire. “It will not have it,” Byron said in a low voice. “I will do the poor best that I can.”

“I? Do you not mean ‘we'?” Claire stood slowly. “Shelley?”

Shelley cleared his throat; his blue eyes looked sad. “We must talk later, my dear. For now, will you not change, and rest? You must not catch an ague.”

Claire paid no attention, continuing to stare at Byron out of huge, dark eyes. Her fingers clutching the blankets around her shoulder trembled; drops of water shook from her sodden hair to spatter on the hearth. “Albé?”

Byron would not look at her. “Go to bed, Claire.” His voice was weary. “Fletcher will make you up a room. Fletcher! You rag, put Miss Clairmont in a guest room. Make it the farthest one from mine you can manage.”