This Wicked Gift (11 page)

He’d tried to run. He’d tried to keep
himself from that realization. But she pronounced sentence upon him as a matter
of fact, as if she were reading the price of cotton from the morning paper. And
she was right. He could not admit it, not aloud. Instead, he leaned down and
rested his forehead against hers in tacit acknowledgment.
 
Yes. I am hopelessly in love with you.

It didn’t change anything.

She stepped back and let go of his arms.
He felt her departure like a palpable blow to his gut.

“As it turns out,” she said quietly, “I
haven’t any use for hopelessness.”

He couldn’t have her. Still, her rejection
felt as if she’d kicked him not on the leg, but rather higher.

“Lavinia, I dare not—”

“Dare,” she said, her voice shaking.
“That’s a command, William.
 
Dare.
 
Hope.
If you won’t accept my gift, I won’t accept yours. And you really,
 
really
,
do not want to know what I shall have to do to come up with ten pounds.”

And with that, she turned and walked into
her family’s circulating library.

E
VEN THOUGH IT FELT
 
as if three days
had passed, it was still early morning when Lavinia came quietly up the stairs.
She came as she’d
left,
her quilted half boots in her
hand. But when she reached the top landing, she
 
discovered she was not alone. James
sat, awake and dressed, at the kitchen table. He watched her come into the
room, watched as she hung her cloak on a peg and set her footgear on the floor.
He didn’t ask where she’d been. He did not accuse her of anything. He didn’t
need to; she accused herself.

She felt adrift. Her gaze skittered across
the room and fell on the books where she’d kept the family accounts. How many
times had she stared at those figures? How many times had she wanted to make
them right, hoped that if they were correct, that everything would be right?

She’d imagined herself saving enough
pennies so she could pick out a scarf for James—something soft and warm. She’d
wanted to swaddle him up and keep him safe. But she’d held him so tightly he’d
never learned to do for himself.

Instead of giving him safety, she’d handed
him powerlessness. Instead of gifting him with stability, she’d robbed him of
the capacity to survive in rough seas. She’d smothered him with competent,
loving efficiency.

Lavinia swallowed a lump in her throat and
walked across the room, away from James. She’d left the account books open on
the desk last night. Careful entries on the page looked up at her. Hadn’t she
just said it?

Love is not lines
on a ledger. You repay love with love.

She shut the books gently and placed the smaller
atop the larger. Even now, it bothered her that the two ledgers were of
slightly different sizes, and so could not be aligned properly. She gathered
them in her arms, uneven though the stack was, and walked across the room to
where James sat.

He didn’t say anything. She sat down next
to him and placed the heavy volumes on the table.

Still he didn’t open his mouth.

Finally, Lavinia let go of the doubts
bedeviling her heart and pushed the books across the table toward him. “Here,”
she said abruptly.

It turned
out,
her brother was not the only one who spoke a foreign tongue. A stranger off the
street might have thought she was giving her brother so much bound paper. But
she knew without even asking that James had understood precisely what she’d
just said.

I was wrong. You
were right. I’m sorry. I trust you.

She’d once heard a Scotsman boast that up
north, they had a hundred words for rain. Mizzle clung to coats in wet, foggy
mists; rain dribbled down. On dismal, dreich
days
water fell in plowtery showers. When liquid falling from the sky was all the
weather you had, you manufactured a lot of words to capture its nuance.

Maybe there was no language of Younger
Brother or Older Sister. There was only a language of families, a tongue woven
from a lifetime of shared experiences. Its vocabulary consisted of gestures and
curt sentences,
 
incomprehensible
to all outsiders. Inside, it wasn’t difficult to translate at all.

I love you.

James didn’t say a word in response.
Instead, he put his arm around her and pulled her close. She ruffled his hair.
A hundred awkward and unwieldy words, all coming down to the same thing after
all:
 
I love
you.

W
ILLIAM HAD THOUGHT
 
he’d made up his
mind to refuse Mr. Sherrod’s solicitor. But Lavinia had dared him to hope.
If she was willing to forgive a black stain on his honor, ought he
not be prepared to swallow a little oiliness in exchange?

He’d met the man at first light, early on
Christmas Eve. They’d had an appointment in a dingy upstairs office, just off
Fleet Street. The solicitor had dressed for their morning appointment with
sartorial stupidity. He wore a ghastly waistcoat of red-striped purple—or was
it purple-striped red?—paired with a jacket and trousers in a cheap, shiny blue
fabric. An ostentatious gold-headed cane leaned against his chair.

“Right,” the solicitor said, shuffling a
pile of papers on his desk. His tone was all brisk business. “I assume we’ve
come to an understanding, then. You’ll file for relief in Chancery, contesting
Mr. Sherrod’s will on the grounds of insanity. I will protest, saying that the
foibles of his mind were precisely what one might expect in a man of his age.”

“And then I’ll get the money?” Two weeks
ago, five
 
thousand pounds might
have meant surcease from drudgery, an escape from his cold world. It would have
meant hot fires and fresh meat and large, comfortable rooms. Today, he could
think of only one thing he wanted. Five thousand pounds meant Lavinia. It meant
he could ask her to marry him, selfish idiot that he was. He could lift his eyes
to her face. He could offer her everything she deserved—riches and wealth,
without any hint of privation. She would have everything of the best.

No. Not everything. The man that came with
it would not be up to her standards.

“Well,” the solicitor hedged, “you might
not get the money
 
immediately.
 
You
might have to wait until after Chancery has sorted matters out, after it has
conducted a hearing or…or two on the matter. But surely then, you’ll have his
fortune.”

She would want him to grasp at any chance
for her. Wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she want a man who was able to hope?

William swallowed the bitter taste in his
mouth. “What would I have to tell the courts?”

“Simple. Tell them Mr. Sherrod was mad.
Manufacture stories, explaining that he saw things that were not present, that
he spoke to pixies. Find folk who would attest to such tales. It would be a
simple matter, if you paid—ahem, I mean, if you found enough of them.”

“You expect me to lie, then.”

“Goodness. I would never suborn perjury. I
want
 
you to tell the truth.” This
supercilious speech was somewhat weakened by a wink.
“The
truth, and nothing but the truth.
A hint of embroidery, though, would
not be amiss. Think of a court case like a woman’s frock—you hide the parts of
the figure that are not so flattering, and frame the bosom so that everyone can
look at the enticing bits.” The solicitor made a gesture in the direction of
his own chest.
“Just enough embellishment to convince the
court of your claim, hmm?”

No matter what this greasy lawyer told
him, William was fairly certain he had nothing but a tiny chance at success. He
might not find people to testify. The court might not believe them. Sherrod’s
widow would undoubtedly claim otherwise. Still, a tiny chance was a chance
nonetheless.

Was this hope that he felt, this grim
determination to see the task through? Was it
hope
that wrapped around his throat, choking him like a noose? Was that morass,
sinking like a stone in his stomach as he gritted his teeth and prepared to do
business with this oily man, what he needed to accept?

Yes.

He opened his mouth to give his assent.

But as he did, he heard that voice again.

You don’t have to
do this.

The voice was wrong. He did have to do
this. Today, when he went in to work, he might lose everything. He might have
no position, and Lavinia could be pregnant. He
 
had
 
to accept any chance, no matter how
small, that could help.

No, you don’t. You
don’t have to do this.

This time, he recognized the words for
what they were. They didn’t come from some outside agency. He was the speaker.
Even if he denied it—even as he betrayed himself—he’d always retained some
semblance of his honor. It had not disappeared. It had simply been here,
waiting for him to follow.

For so long, he’d simply believed he had
sunk so low in society that he did not dare to lift his face. Oh, yes, he’d
dishonored himself. But he couldn’t find honor by seeking forgiveness. He could
not wait for Lavinia or anyone else to absolve him of his sins.

If William ever hoped to have some measure
of honor, he had to be an honorable man.

The solicitor must have seen his
hesitation.

“Think,”
he
said,
“on the
 
revenge
 
you could take on the man who
destroyed your father.”

He’d dwelled on that dark thought for a
decade. But how could he expect forgiveness for his own sins, if he could not
grant absolution to the man who’d wronged him?

He would have to give up any chance at
those five thousand pounds. That meant he would give up any chance at having
Lavinia—but then, when Lavinia had told him to hope, she hadn’t meant that he
should hope for her.

She’d wanted him to hope for himself.

“No,” he said. It felt good in every way
to know that he could choose to be honorable, even knowing the cost.

Confusion lit the solicitor’s face. “No?
What could you possibly mean by no?”

“No, I won’t embellish the truth past
recognition. No, I won’t tell lies. No, I won’t seek revenge to keep you in
Chancery fees. I’m not that kind of man.” He had been, once, but he was no
longer.

“Who will ever know that you lied?”

William shrugged. “Me?”

“You?”
The
solicitor laughed in scorn. “Well, trust in yourself, then. You’ll not deliver
yourself from poverty.”

William stood. He’d thought his soul had
depreciated until it was worth less than nothing. Strange he’d not realized: it
always had precisely the value he chose to give it.

As he left, the man called out after him.
“I hope you take great pleasure in yourself. Likely it’s all you’ll ever have.”

The words no longer sounded like the curse
they once would have been.

O
N
 
C
HRISTMAS
 
E
VE
MORNING,
 
Lavinia
shared the responsibility of running the shop with her brother. The two of
them, even in that small downstairs room, should not have made the room feel so
close. Yes, there were nearly fifteen hundred volumes packed into a tiny space.
The shelves stretched head height and above. But Lavinia had never found the
two tiny rooms confining before, not even with a surfeit of customers. But
today
 
the books seemed to tower
over her, choking her with memories.

She would look up from her desk and
remember the first time she’d seen William, standing so ill at ease in front of
her, asking for a subscription. She would place a volume back on the shelf and
remember the sight of him in that very spot, searching for a title. He would
run his finger carefully down a leather binding. In those days, she’d envied
the books. But now, he’d touched her with greater reverence.

He’d not been able to hide the meaning of
those gestures. Over and over, he’d told her he loved her. He loved her, and so
he made her wretchedly watered-down tea. He loved her and he longed to touch
her, but instead he warned her she’d have no butter with her bread. He loved
her.

And yet she’d brought him hopelessness
rather than happiness. Together, they’d managed to share a fine portion of
guilt. She might gladly have suffered deprivation for him, but he was not the
kind of man who could watch the woman he loved
be
deprived.