Susan Speers (26 page)

We three sat before two still, cool cups of tea. Dr. Sachs had new lines around his eyes. Jeremy’s restless movements scraped mud across carpet and upholstery.

“Jeremy,” I said to him. “Dr. Sachs —”

“I know who he is. I didn’t know you corresponded.”

“A condition of your release, Major.” The doctor turned to me. “It was best I spoke to your cousin first, that my impressions not be compromised.”

“You’re done with me.”

I frowned at Jeremy’s manners. Complete lack of them better described his behavior.

“I am, yes. For now.” The doctor put his head to one side as he looked at Jeremy. “Unless you’d prefer —”

“I’m done with you.”

“Jeremy!” This would not help our cause.

“I’ll leave you to discuss your patient.” His movements were abrupt as he quit the room.

“Dr. Sachs, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m so delighted, my dear.” His faded eyes twinkled. “Rude, boorish. He’s getting stronger.”

“I wanted you to see him at his best.”

“I said no warning, young lady.”

“I remember. I am glad you’ve come.” I gave him a brief description of the day’s events and touched on Jeremy’s usual activities.

“You’re encouraged,” he said.

“We move forward, then back,” I said. “Of late, great leaps forward, but I always worry.”

“About a setback.”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Scard, you court his recovery. As its possibility grows near, so does the chance of failure.”

I was baffled.

“If Major Marchmont suffered pneumonia I would say his fever approached crisis. When his capability is greatest, he’ll face his demons.”

“Win or lose?” My throat ached.

Dr. Sachs smiled. “Treating the mind is not so simple. Even a great setback can be turned around.” He pulled at his beard. “I do caution you. This risky time has towering highs and terrible lows. A positive outlook can turn suicidal at an unexpected shadow.”

He looked down at the muddy carpet before he spoke again. “Your cousin is intelligent, sensitive, stubborn, and rigid to the point of damage. He’ll have to bend to take on his troubles or they will break him.”

Had I worked so hard to bring Jemmy back, only to lose him?

Dr. Sach’s stern face softened. “Mrs. Scard, I seldom see improvement like this in so short a time. I’m concerned, though, for you, as well. Carers can also be casualties of the struggle. But I think your health has improved, too, no?”

I nodded. “We walk for miles, every day.”

“The estate is the factor?” His wise eyes saw too much.

“We grew up here.”

“Yes.” His hands made a motion as if to open a folder. “I know something of your family history. You two were prevented from marrying.”

“We were.”

“This wound hasn’t healed for either of you, despite your marriages to others.”

I couldn’t hide my anger at his probing.

“People dislike psychoanalysis, Mrs. Scard,” he said. “I’m not offended. Without your help, I would have to commit Major Marchmont to an institution. There may, however, be consequences for you. I hope you’ll call on me should the need arise.”

*****

At dinner Jem punished me with silence. He saw my glance at his untouched plate and narrowed his eyes.

“Will this go in the report?”

“It’s not that simple,” I said.

“I was simple to trust you,” his bitter words wounded me.

“And if you suffered pneumonia you’d want me to treat you with bread poultices and willow bark tea?”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“It is. It’s worse. You’re hurt, Jeremy, terribly wounded. I’d want you to do the same for me.”

“Interfere.”

“Yes, if you think it necessary.”

“His questions cut like knives.” His voice grated and he took a sip of wine.

“He said things to me I didn’t like,” I ate a piece of potato with feigned calm. Sometimes Jeremy mirrored my actions without realizing it. “I suppose it’s like surgery or foul tasting medicine.”

“It’s far worse,” he began to eat. I was careful not to watch.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too. For all of it. You think I’m not grateful. I don’t act it, but I am.”

“There’s no gratitude,” I said. “Not between us.”

A pulse of intimacy hovered in the air between us. We both looked away. I daresay Jem was as glad as I of Henry’s entrance with our pudding.

We were quiet together after dinner and through the night. I kept to the bounds of our youth, there was danger for us in adult feelings. Jeremy looked at me, his eyes soft on my face. It didn’t feel intrusive. I was glad he focused on something of this world.

*****

Jem began to comment on Hethering’s parkland on our walks. He saw the neglect and changes made necessary by absent groundsmen.

“You’ve done well with limited means,” he said. “It can’t be easy.”

One day after lunch, I’d finished my accounts and was adding detail to an illustration for Willow’s story. Jeremy’s brisk knock took me from my reverie.

“How right you look behind that desk,” he said. “Uncle Richard would be amazed how it suits you.” He looked down at my work. “Will there be a new book?”

“Yes,” I said. “About the day we met Willow.”

His smile held at once nostalgia, sorrow, the shadow of her madness. “Quite a gap since your last project.”

“I’m writing the story too.” I didn’t want to mention Belle’s book. It started a disastrous chain of events with Dickon, and Jeremy was much more involved. So much happened to us because of that day’s events: our first real kiss, the punishment of separation. I didn’t want Jeremy hurt by those painful memories.

Jem had papers in his hand. “You’re agent here,” he said. “I come to ask permission.”

I smiled and played along. “Permission?”

“To build a summer house at the center of the rose garden. I found an old plan in the library — it predates Madison Marchmont.” He spread a series of drawings in front of me. “I copied it out.”

Graceful lines echoed Hethering’s walls. It wasn’t a folly, not really.

“I can make it fit the center bed,” Jemmy said. “We’ll have to transplant, of course, but it’s doable. What do you think?”

“I think it’s wonderful.”

“I can build this,” he said. “I can cut the wood, I can make the foundation.”

“Then you must do it,” I said. To keep the eager light in his eyes I would rip out every flower in the garden.

Everything was going so well. Jeremy had new found energy. He drew and redrew the summerhouse plans. He built a scale model. He cut wood with great care. He consulted Blum for hours as they decided the best places to transplant the roses. When the weather was warm enough they moved the canes.

We still spent nights in the library, but now I woke to hear him snoring, his head dropped folded hands. A quiet word with Henry brought a leather chaise from a dressing room to a secluded corner in the library. The next night I woke to see Jeremy sleeping supine and I closed my eyes to better rest as well.

Stones were piled at the center of the rose garden the day I came to my study and found “Belle’s Rescue” open on my desk beside a new drawing for the foundation. Jeremy had come to me for approval, found Belle’s book and read it. I had to find him, explain somehow why our lives were laid bare for all to see.

I ran to the library, his bedroom, our small sitting room. I ran across the lawn. He wasn’t in the rose garden. I shouted his name. Dread squeezed my heart, as I ran down the long meadow toward the Bridge of Sighs. A pelting rain began, warm as tears.

Terror and grief overwhelmed me at the water’s edge. I could just make out Jeremy’s body floating face down. Nightmare images of Willow’s death pursued me as I dragged the oars to the skiff. I jammed my fingers forcing them into place.

There was no time to get help. I rowed with choppy thrusts, sobbing and gasping, my face averted until the last moment. One last pull and I’d be beside him, but the force of my effort shot the oar from its broken lock.

It struck Jeremy’s temple. I tore off my wet skirt, ready to jump in and grab his body before it sank. To my shock, he stood up, the water chest high. He was bleeding, snarling, furious.

“Are you trying to kill me!” he shouted.

I burst into tears. “I thought you were dead!”

“I will be, if you keep at it.” Blood ran down his face, soaking his collar.

“You were floating face down.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve, all of Nurse’s training forgotten.

“Nice way to rouse me. I was diving for the maps.”

“What maps?”

“The ones I left behind to save Belle.”

“For God’s sake, Jeremy!” I was shrieking like a fishwife. “It was years ago, the paper is dissolved.”

“They were sheepskin. I remembered it when I saw your book. I thought something might be preserved.”

“I thought you were drowning.”

“Not until you rowed by. Some rescue. Drowning in these shallows?”

“I had the pond dredged.”

“And then you tested the level?”

No. But I wouldn’t admit it.

He pulled the boat to shore and gave me a hand out. “Tear a strip from that petticoat. Two strips, you’re bleeding too.”

I bound his head and he bandaged my hand. He took my skirt from the boat and offered it with a gallant gesture.

It was all too much. I began to laugh and he did too. It was painful, hysterical laughter, the kind Nurse always said would end in tears. I began to weep.

Jeremy stopped laughing and put his arms around me, just as he had done on the day of Belle’s rescue. Then he raised my chin and kissed me.

The rain had stopped and we were bathed in a muzzy golden light. Jeremy’s kiss opened every avenue to my heart. I swam in sensation before Dickon’s memory crushed me with guilt.

I pushed Jeremy away. “You mustn’t,” I said, my hand over my mouth. “I can’t, I just can’t.” I ran back to the house, to the sanctuary of my bedroom.

“Clarry wait,” Jemmy called, but he didn’t chase after me. Blum’s slow moving donkey cart lumbered between us. We were already at the edge of scandal.

*

He found me at Dickon’s grave. I’d brought new plants to add to Dora’s careful tending. How long had I been away?

Jeremy knelt beside me and helped clear away the turf I cut. “You loved him,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I tried to believe you didn’t, couldn’t love him like me.”

“I didn’t love him the way I love you,” I said. “I failed him because he knew it.”

“Oh, Clarry.”

“I failed him because I lost his child.”

Now he looked shocked. “I didn’t know about that. You miscarried?”

“The Marchmont curse.”

He took my hands in his and made me look at him. His face was stern. “You know better than that, Clarissa. It was shock and grief.”

He gathered small white stones by the brook and arranged them around my plantings.

“I never loved Caroline,” he said in a quiet voice. “I liked her, I liked her a lot, but the wrongness of our marriage ended that. From time to time I have admired her. I have never understood her.”

“I understand her all too well,” I said. She loved him as I did, she had his child. She’d do anything to get him well, even send him to me.

“Dickon had your love,” Jeremy said. “He had your hand in marriage, he had an honorable death. I’m alive, I’m with you and in your care, and I still envy him.”

There was so much for us to say to each other, but I couldn’t speak it beside Dickon’s grave. I think Jeremy understood my reluctance, shared it. He rose and offered me his hand.

“Do you still believe I can be as good and generous a man as Dickon was?” he asked me as we passed through the cemetery gate. His voice held such longing.

“I do,” I said.

*****

From then on, he worked like a man possessed to finish the summer house. He wrote reams of tedious catalogue entries. He performed a thousand courtesies to make my days easier.

“Let me,” he said one evening and took the heavy volume of
Dombey and Sons
from my hands. I closed my eyes to hear the velvet rumble of his voice — I had missed it so much. He conspired with Henry and folios of piano music arrived from London.

He continued his walks with Lawrence Pickety. They came to fetch me for family suppers at the vicarage. Amalia watched over us fondly, as if we’d not journeyed far from her schoolroom.

“Jeremy’s courting you,” she said after I’d helped settle her children, who protested, then dropped into slumber like blossoms from a stem.

“He’s grateful,” I said. “He wants to thank me.”

“Be careful, Clarry,” she said. “People see him well and able. They begin to talk.”

“About us living together at Hethering,” I nodded. “I’ve thought of moving to Willow’s cottage.”

“Even that will not serve,” she said.

*****

Bit by bit I began to hold back from Jeremy. He sensed this right away and moved closer and closer, never allowing space to grow between us. A fine tension hummed in our silences. I knew part of it was our increasing need for the love reawakened at the Bridge of Sighs. Part was Dickon’s memory, part our uncertain future. But there was something else unnamed and it held a menace that baffled me.

Dr. Sachs wrote “
Again I must caution, Mrs. Scard, when I only want to praise you. Major Marchmont has yet to unburden himself of his dark memories. To truly heal he must confess them to another, perhaps a doctor or a clergyman or a friend.
”

Whenever I saw Jeremy leave the house with Lawrence, I said a silent prayer that this would be the day, the hour he could speak of what still weighed him down. Surely Lawrence, his teacher, his friend, his spiritual advisor was the person best suited to hear it.

One afternoon, Jeremy returned from their walk more exercised in temper than in body. His face was creased with harsh lines, his jacket discarded, his shirt damp with sweat.

He glared at my study window, he knew I watched him. He went to the summer house and banged a hammer on its steps until they were finished.