Susan Speers (28 page)

“You and your wife will settle things?”

“I’m not sure I like your tone.” He sat up and looked at me, his eyes narrow.

“What matters then?”

“A divorce, of course. The time has come.”

“She won’t give you a divorce, Jeremy.”

“Of course she will. We’re nothing to each other.”

“You’re Arthur’s father.” Caroline would fight hard to reunite them.

“Yes, quite.” A longing entered his eyes. “That won’t change. We’ll live apart, but he’ll come to visit us.”

“Visit us? Here at Hethering? That would be irregular.”

“We’ll marry, of course, Clarry. Everything above board.”

“Caroline won’t let you put her aside.”

“She’ll have to. I won’t spend another night beneath the same roof as she.”

“Even for Arthur’s sake?”

He looked away. “It won’t come to that.” Two fever bright circles of red spotted his high cheek bones. “I’m a diplomat, Clarry. I can talk a bird down from a tree. You’re the one who told me that.”

“Jeremy, think of your diplomatic career. A divorce would put paid to it.”

“I don’t want that life any more, even if they’ll have me.”

“Why not?” I hadn’t told him what Rutherford said. What if he were wrong? What if he wasn’t?

“It’s not good clean work like carpentry. It’s lies and posing, threats and slippery promises. I wouldn’t mind a bash at the peace talks, but that’s a dream with my record.”

“They owe you that much, you’re better now.” Carpentry wouldn’t hold his attention for long.

“Don’t turn the subject. I’ll divorce Caroline, remain Arthur’s father, and love you for the rest of our lives.”

I felt a deep chill within me. The world was not so simple. Caroline was not so uncomplicated. She was capable of trusting Jeremy to me as a last resort. She was capable of turning her face away from what resulted. She would not easily be persuaded to live as a divorced woman, abandoned by her husband. She could hurt him and he was so vulnerable.

“You don’t trust me. You don’t think I can do this.” He threw away his bit of grass and chewed his thumbnail as he’d done when an angry schoolboy.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what?”

I cast about for a way to stall him. “I don’t know if I can be a scandal.”

It was a poor excuse and he scowled. “What does that matter? We love each other. We’re meant to be together. It’s mad to think otherwise.” A bitter smile curled his lip. “If you’ll forgive me that word.”

Our difference of opinion began to color our bright days with an acid tinge. I searched the post for a letter from Caroline, but there was none. I’d stopped writing her when Jem and I became lovers. I couldn’t keep up a pretense, not even in brief notes. I avoided Amalia, too, so not to disappoint her. I felt very much alone.

Jem didn’t mention Caroline again, and I would not, I think we both feared another quarrel. We were industrious during the day, at night he made love to me with such great tenderness, I could not fail to respond. Could anything come between us, now we’d found the love we’d craved so long?

Jeremy took leftover wood from the summerhouse to the top of Willow’s meadow and built a bench, a twin or as near as he could make it of the one by the pond. The view of its autumn blue waters beside my fairytale cottage inspired sketches for embroidery, though I didn’t like to sit still for long, so many questions would go through my head.

One morning I woke before the birds. Jem was awake too. He knew sleep had left me.

“I will love you forever, Clarry,” he said, his voice soft and deep.

Slow tears dripped from my eyes into the pillow. “No matter what?”

He sat up in one abrupt motion. “There is no ‘what’. I will love you forever. That’s all. It’s everything.”

But I knew better. After he left for his bath, I sat at my dressing table, brushing my hair until it crackled with electricity. Jeremy had a wife and a child, a career and a reputation. All would be sacrificed to the disgrace of divorce. I couldn’t pretend he would mind Caroline’s loss, but the rest were irreplaceable.

A breakfast, I ate only tea and toast. At lunch, very little more . At tea, I only stirred my cup. His eyes were fixed on my empty plate. “Clarry, are you poorly? You’re not —”

“No,” I said, though I’d longed for his baby. “I want to talk about our future, Jeremy. I don’t want a divorce.”

“We don’t need one,” he said with a poor attempt at a joke. “And once we’re wed, I won’t give you one either.”

“It’s too costly for you,” I said.

“So we will part? Again? It’s unthinkable.”

“I’m willing to consider a — a different arrangement.” My face felt hot with blood. I couldn’t meet his eyes. We’d been so free at Hethering. Bridling our love with society’s cruel bit was a travesty, but if he could keep his son —

“So, after all we have been to each other, you choose dishonor?”

“If it’s the only way.”

“You couldn’t do that, Clarry, it isn’t in you. This is just your first step away from me.” His words were sparks snapping from the anger in his eyes.

“And I, after all you’ve said to me about being a better man, I’m condemned to a life of cheating and pretense?”

“Jeremy, I can’t think that a divorce is right for you.”

“I’m well now, Clarissa, you don’t order my life anymore.” He was white beneath his tanned skin, his jaw clamped tight.

“I order my life,” I said.

He picked up a china vase and smashed it into the empty fireplace. “Don’t you dare give me up! Don’t you dare for a moment say you brought me back from one hell to live in another.”

I held my breath. He saw the wariness in my eyes and laughed, a mirthless cough. “I’m angry. I’m very angry, but I’m not dangerous. You’re not in any danger from me.”

Oh, but I was.

He paced to the fireplace and back. “I will go for a long walk,” he said, “uphill I think. The decision before us is a hard one for you, you’ve convinced me of that, but we’ve lingered over it far too long. A decision like this should be made quickly, once, like a surgeon’s cut. We must never look back.”

I watched him, fascinated. Jeremy the diplomat.

“I will think, you will think,” he said. “I will decide, you will decide. For us to be together, the only right decision in my mind, requires two votes yes. Be careful Clarry. A single ‘no’ will deny us the joyful, truly joyful life we are meant to have.”

I was mesmerized. He could talk a bird from a tree.

“When I choose yes, I will sit on my new bench until sundown. I’ll wait for you. When you choose yes, you’ll join me there. It’s as simple as that.”

*****

How many hours were there until the sun set? I didn’t know, but I had a lot to think about. I was angry at Jemmy for forcing my hand. I understood his resolve, I understood his fears, most of them, but his decision to write to Caroline without consulting me could change my life as much as his. Or was writing to Caroline his first step away from me?

We’d loved each other a long time, boy and girl, man and woman, together and apart. We had a future before us as beautiful as the Fifth Folly on the hill, though the path to it was just as thorny. Jeremy wanted to hack our way through, but we wouldn’t be the only ones left bleeding. There was Caroline, there were countrymen who needed Jeremy’s skill to make a difficult peace. Most of all, there was Arthur.

Jeremy had wept in my arms, inconsolable one night after an awful nightmare. He saw the face of the boy he killed, he saw it when he dreamed, he saw it in his waking hours. “I have to do right by Arthur,” he said. “Arthur and all the children.” There was so much to consider.

And yet, he was right to insist we make our decision and not look back. Regret would belie our love or our sacrifice. I picked up the shards of porcelain, one by one, from the fireplace and put them in a basket. It could never be mended. What would I shatter this afternoon? Our hearts? His future? The bond between a father and what could be his only child? If only I had conceived during these happy weeks.

Henry’s knock broke into my reverie. His eyes held a warning. “Mrs. Marchmont is here,” he said.

I scarce had time to dust my perspiring hands against my rumpled skirt when she swept into the room.

“Well, Clarry,” she said. She was dressed in the latest fashion, not a hair out of place. Bits of fur decorated her tailored suit. She was a huntress.

“Jeremy isn’t here.” I was the prey. She knew what to say. I was tongue tied with surprise.

“That’s unfortunate. I daresay he wanted this meeting, not you.”

“Yes,” we could agree on that point. “He’s better now, you know.”

“I know that, no thanks to you. I guessed he’d recovered as soon as your little letters stopped. You were never a good liar, Clarry. You and Jeremy are lovers, are you not?”

I didn’t reply. I’d been hot with emotion since she was announced. Now I felt every bit of blood drain from my face.

“You wouldn’t have risked his health with complication. You waited. No more letters from you. Then his summons. He wants a divorce.”

I felt quite faint and kept my hand on the back of Jeremy’s wing chair to stay standing. I cleared my throat. “We haven’t decided, umm, that is —”

“The two of you haven’t decided? About my divorce?” Her brittle voice cracked. “How very presumptuous. Your opinion, Clarry, is beside the point. I might put Jeremy’s life in your hands, I’ll never put mine there.”

A shadow darkened the room. I looked out the window. Where was the sun? These early autumn evenings were deceptive, but my time was running out.

Caroline moved to the curve of the piano as if to sing. “Jeremy will receive a summons from the Foreign Office next week. They’ve approached me with no little discretion. I promised to have him reply in good order. I promised to remove the last impediment: You.”

“You’re very sure of yourself.” I wanted my voice to stop shaking.

“Your unnatural attachment to my husband is an open secret in polite society.”

“And his attachment to me?” I would not be bullied.

Her face reddened as if slapped. She began to remove her gloves, finger by finger. “I won’t give him a divorce. If he tries I will keep him from his son and blacken his name and end his career. I’ll blacken your name. I’ll apply for conservatorship of Hethering, citing Jeremy’s family history and ill health.”

“We were partners once,” I mused, shaken by her malevolence. Or had I only imagined it?

“So were France and Russia. When benefit ceases, the alliance ends.”

Outside the windows, across Hethering’s green lawns, the light was fading.

“Thank you, Caroline,” I said after a long quiet moment.

“Thank you? Are you mad now? Is it catching, or only in the blood?”

“You’ve helped me. Excuse me.”

I left the salon, rushed through the Hall and down the front steps. Caroline’s chauffeur stared as I picked up my skirts and ran beneath darkening skies to the Marchgate Wood. I was ready to take my place beside Jeremy. I would protect him from Caroline Fforde. Whatever happened, we would see it through together. We’d survived a lot worse.

I was very nearly out of the woods and into Willow’s meadow, when I stopped to smooth my skirts and catch my breath. I left the path to look through a stand of evergreens at Jeremy, sitting on his new made bench, his arm extended across its back waiting for me. He didn’t look worried. His face bore an expectant smirk. I grinned. He was right, he’d always been right and he knew it.

The sun skimmed the surface of the pond below, ready to take its final plunge. Just before I moved to join my Jem, I heard a rustling of leaves and footsteps pounding the hardened earth of the path. Had Caroline followed me?

No, she was wiser than that. Wiser than me. Skilled in diplomatic perfidy from her years at Jeremy’s side.

“Papa, Papa!” Arthur ran past me, out of the wood and into Jeremy’s arms. “You’re better now, Mama told me so. Are you?”

I saw the stunned look on Jeremy’s face. His son was even more his double, without a trace of his mother’s looks. “I’m well. Catch your breath, Arthur.” Jeremy held his child, frantic eyes searching the wood. I shrank back.

“Mama says you’ll come home and be my Papa. Is it true?”

Jeremy stared over Arthur’s shoulder into the wood. His eyes were desperate, but I couldn’t move. Father and son belonged together. Arthur’s claim was stronger than mine. It was sacrifice after all.

“Will you come home with us tonight, Papa?” The sun was gone from the sky.

I never heard Jeremy’s reply. They passed so close to me in the darkness, I could have reached out my hand to touch his sleeve, but I didn’t.

I stumbled through the moonless night to the vicarage. Amalia saw my face and pulled me inside and up to her bedroom.

“Jeremy will live in London with his family,” I said, and began to shake. She put a shawl over my shoulders.

“No one could have done more for him than you,” she said. “No one could have helped him as you did, but perhaps a clean break is best.”

“It’s not a clean break.” I began to weep with ugly, tearing sobs. She put her arms around me.

“It never was.” She let me cry until I forced myself to stop.

“I have to leave now, Amalia. I have to take the next train. I can’t go back, I can’t look back, not for a minute.”

I boarded the next London bound train with a valise of borrowed clothing and Amalia’s housekeeping money in my pocket.

I don’t like to remember the next few days. I registered at the Savoy under an assumed name and contacted my bankers. I sat alone as smoky city light flared with daybreak and faded in the afternoon. The chambermaid adopted me and brought me meals whether I ordered them or no.

I bought new clothing and sent a note to Rutherford Dane. He entered my suite and sat down without any preliminary bluster. “How can I help you?” he said. He waited until I could reply.

“I need a place to stay,” I said. “A private place.”

“I know the one,” he said. “Pack up.”

He drove me to the village of Dartford, east of London. There was a small, well kept house on a largish piece of land, surrounded by a ten foot high brick wall.