The Loves of Leopold Singer (48 page)

Why didn’t her parents write? No one knew anything. Sara suspected the worst.

“I’m going to tell you a secret,” Wills said. He was still a little drunk, but he wasn’t obnoxious. “My brother is about to give you a gift of jewelry. It will agree with you.”

She looked out at the stars. What could she say to that?

He said, “I spent an entire day to find it for you.”

Mr. Geordie Carleson was going to ask her to marry him. There in the carriage, under that moon, she decided to accept him. She didn’t love him as Eleanor loved her Jonnie or even as her own mother loved her father. That kind of romance was not for her. She didn’t want a handsome devil like Wills Asher, no matter how alive she had felt dancing in his arms. No matter that she trembled when he stood very near, or that his jokes were so much cleverer than the Geordie Carleson’s would ever be.

She wanted stability, dependability, basic decency. She wanted the rock, not the wave.
 
She wouldn’t make the mistake her mother had made. She wouldn’t commit her life on a whim. She didn’t love Squire Carleson, but she did care for him. She would be a good wife to him.

Wills could hardly bear to look at Sara. She was so innocent, so lovely. It was exciting to see her shine in Coleridge’s presence. And when the poet recited the Kubla Khan with such fire and innuendo, she stood her ground. She didn’t blush or turn away. She wasn’t coarse, but she did enjoy it. She was no Puritan; she was merely shy. And she was the only heir of Philomela’s only heir. The Asher barony would pass to her son.

But that wasn’t the point.

The point was that he loved Sara. Geordie only thought he loved her. Geordie didn’t know her, not as Wills had come to know her. If Geordie had seen the way Sara responded to the poet tonight, his fastidious self would have been repulsed. No, Sara was like himself, alive to the dark as well as the light. She only wanted him to guide her, to care for her, to help her blossom.

It would be a sin against all that was natural if this sensitive girl married stolid Geordie. It would doom her to become a cave of ice.

“I’m glad my brother stayed home,” Wills said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Have you really no idea?” He knelt on the floor of the coach and took her hands in his.

“Oh. Mr. Asher.”

“Miss Adams—Sara. My Sara.” He kissed her gloved fingers.

“Mr.—Wills! Oh, no.”

Her shyness increased his desire, his need to cherish her, to ease her fears. He would have her. He would have her now. He knew of such things. Once a man had a maid, she had no choice but to marry him. It would guarantee his suit. He loved her. And he knew she loved him. That was all the reason they needed. He didn’t hear her say no. He didn’t hear her cry no.

“I won’t hurt you.” He reassured her. “I could never hurt you. As the moon and stars are our witness, I love you.” He lifted her skirts and made his way into her, into her softness. She was everything he had hoped she would be. He had come home. Out of Sara, he would make the world he dreamed of. He had her; she was his. He shuddered into her, surrounded her with all that he was. She was his, and he was hers.

He had gotten it all wrong.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I am so sorry.”

She wouldn’t look at him. She was broken, and he was the one who had broken her. She could never be his now. He had made a dreadful mistake. “Forgive me.” But he knew she couldn’t.

At long last they came to The Branch. He leaned forward and put his arm across the door, and she burst into tears. “Have pity,” she said. “Let me go.” Her tears weren’t of rage or anger but of sorrow and despair. When the footman opened the door, Wills made no move to stop her. She was gone, flying up the stairs and away from him forever, away from his continuing whispered
forgive me
.

“Laurelwood.” He sat back and tried to block the disaster from his mind. The crescent moon now hung low, like a single eye winking at him along the way. “Damn the moon and the stars, and damn all poets.” Wills didn’t go into the house. Geordie would be waiting to hear about the evening. He went directly to the stables, saddled his horse, and rode for London.

The house and grounds were a triumph of Enlightenment design. Two figures rode in an open carriage up the long approach to The Branch through the manicured park. The boulevard ended in a circular piazza before the main house, a three-story rectangle with a generous number of evenly spaced windows fronted by a half circle of stone steps anchored at the incongruously small entrance.

The men surrendered their cloaks at the door. Inside, the half-circle pattern repeated in a curving double staircase and arches cut into the walls of the rectangular foyer. To the left was the bright, capacious ballroom. To the right was the music room and then library. Geordie Carleson and Dr. Devilliers passed through the forward arch and on to the parlor.

Upstairs, Elizabeth closed Philomela’s bedroom door and paused at the top of the stairs, aware people were gathering below. She felt suddenly oppressed by the symmetry of The Branch’s architecture. Today she didn’t want to be Lady Asher. She wanted neither to inform nor to comfort, nor to bear up with good grace. Today, she was not dignified.

She wished she were young Lizzie again, eleven years old, running through wild fields and examining insects in the long, lazy summer. She held onto the banister, each step a jolt as she descended.

I shouldn’t have married Sir Carey
. Even as she had the thought, she rejected it; without Sir Carey, there would have been no Wills. The world saw her interact far more with her firstborn and might believe she loved Geordie best, and indeed their temperaments were alike. But she admired the wild spirit in Wills and was oppressed by the cynicism that possessed him these last years.

She had been happiest after the squire died, leaving her with what she had always wanted: a robust property to manage. Laurelwood was her heart’s home, so different from The Branch. She had loved it from the moment she saw it. Laurelwood rambled, none of the rooms mirrored each other; no patterns trapped her there.

The grounds were organic and wild. Autumn winds sang Gothic songs in the trees, and spring brought on a Dionysian riot of color and life. At Laurelwood, she could hold onto some bit of her self. She could ride over the land, consult about the livestock and the crops, visit the rectory, and forget that a husband sometimes appeared in the house.

At The Branch, it was impossible to wander. Here, the architecture screamed good form and reminded her that she was Lady Asher, not Lizzie. Not even Elizabeth. She couldn’t run down these stairs to fall apart in front of Dr. Devilliers and be gathered together again by him.

But then that was just a habit of fantasy, no longer a real desire.

Miss Adams had taken Dr. Devilliers and Geordie into the parlor. She must join them now and tell them that Philomela was dying. She couldn’t do it.

She sat down on a tread near the bottom of the stairs. Her boys had grown away from her, gone to the privacy of their manhood, and she had adjusted to live with “what remained,” as the poet put it. The squire had gone to death, Sir Carey had gone to promiscuity, and she and Philomela had remained.

But there would be nothing of Philly that remained. Every spring, the bloom of daffodils would be like God celebrating Elizabeth’s bereavement. Where in the yellows, oranges and whites would Philly’s laughter lie? Where in the green shoots would her wisdom be? When a predator took a favorite lamb, who would understand the loss so well? Everyone in the world admired Elizabeth’s husbandry; only Philly understood it.
My friend, my best friend
.

Sir Carey walked into the hall, just arrived from London, and glanced at her sitting on the stairs. His face was drained of color, his eyes red and swollen. He sat down with her on the stairs and leaned against the wall.

“Mr. Brennan is with her.”

“Is there no hope?”

“I am afraid there is none.”

He looked so forlorn, so lost. Of course his pain was naturally greater than hers. She held her arms open, and he fell into her embrace like an inconsolable child, sobs racking his body. She patted his head and murmured, “I know, I know.” When all the tears were cried, both let out a sigh and smiled at the simultaneity of it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I am so sorry, Elizabeth.”

She let the silence hang between them. Some things seemed unimportant now. “I am not sorry that I married you,” she said finally. It was the only thing she could say on the subject that was both true and kind.

“Thank you for that, my dear.”

Susan appeared with a tray of tea and cakes which she placed on a tread. Elizabeth conveyed her appreciation with a glance. The cousins rarely had to speak anymore. Over the years, they had developed routines which allowed them to work automatically in crises.

Susan limped slightly as she retreated toward the parlor, and with a shock Elizabeth realized she had been limping for some time now. And her hair was rather grayer than it had been. Sir Carey had changed too. The lines on his face were deeper and more numerous than in the picture of him she carried in her brain. After all, he was nearing sixty.

“I have been unfair to you,” she said. “Perhaps men and women are too different from one another to live by the same rules. You men speak things into existence, with your laws and proclamations and wills. We women must coax and spin and intrigue.”

“We are the builders and you the weavers?”

“And we depend upon your word, your stability. If a man is not steady, a woman suffers.”

“You have turned philosopher,” he smiled. “But fidelity is one rule best kept. When a man breaks it, he loses too much.”

“And yet...” She couldn’t complete the thought. She wouldn’t hurt him with the truth:
And yet you did break it
.

“Yes,” his chin trembled, “and yet.”
 

“Sir Carey.” Mr. Brennan came down two steps before Sir Carey met him. “You can go in, but don’t overburden her.”

“Will she live, then?”

“That is in God’s hands.”

Sir Carey had grown by stages into a grounded and solid man, confident of his virtues, accepting of his demerits, and comfortable in the few pleasures left to him. If he still slept with the wrong women, well, it was only because the right one wouldn’t have him. All this hard-earned confidence fell from him like shattered glass when he saw his aunt, tiny and frail in her four-poster. He grabbed her burning hand. Her rapid breathing was light, like a bird’s. He climbed onto the bed and lay beside her, still clasping her hand, holding it to his cheek.

“Aunt Philly,” he whispered.
 

“My boy,” she murmured.

“Don’t leave me.”

“I think I must, dear.”

Like charging into a stupid, last battle in a war already lost, he blurted, “Was Daphne my mother?”

“Very well.” She sighed. “I will tell you how it was.” She motioned for him to help her sit up. His heart raced so that he could hardly move. “Aristaeus Sande came to woo my sister Circe.” She breathed easier, and her voice grew stronger with each word. “But he became obsessed with me. Why? I was never beautiful, even in my youth. I didn’t even like him. But he wasn’t used to being disliked. Perhaps that was it.

“One day while I was out walking, a storm came up and I took shelter in the hunter’s cottage. He’d been following me. He said he too had been caught by Nature. He built a fire and wrapped a shawl around my shoulders, all the while expounding on my sister’s merits.”

“Philly, don’t tire yourself.”

“Deuteronomy says if a woman is taken in the country, she’s not guilty because her cries can’t be heard. My cries weren’t heard in that storm. He ravished me again and again over many hours and then left me there, mortified and ashamed. He warned me that if I said anything I would be seen for the jealous, unwanted sister that I was.

“Weeks passed, and Circe left England with that...pirate. A few weeks after that, I knew how it was with me. I would dearly have liked to tell the world you were Daphne’s son, for you would now be Lord Branch. But she had never been with child, and too many people knew that. I bore you and passed you off as the legitimate son of a gentlewoman who died in the typhus epidemic. It was the best I could do for you, my boy. The gentlewoman’s uncle, Ciaran Gallagher, is the only man in England who knows the truth.”