Love Bade Me Welcome (16 page)

“Davinia, how can you say such a thing?”

“How can I think anything else? I am sorry I listened to you. You
deceived
me.”

“I told you nothing but the truth.”

“Your
version of the truth. The whole of it is you want Laversham’s so badly you’d marry me to get it, and maybe even convince yourself you care for me a little. If that is how you construe love, leave me out of it. For me, love never was and never will be a question of money or property.”

An angry flush crept into his cheeks. “You managed a financially rewarding match for yourself, despite your lofty claims,” he said stiffly. “What did
you
bring to the marriage, outside of a pretty face?”

“I brought myself. It is all Norman wanted.”

“Yes, I didn’t mean to imply the face came unattached to a body, but it is the custom for the bride of a baronet to bring with her a dowry.”

“Well, I didn’t bring one to Norman, and I will not be bringing the dowry of Laversham’s place to
you
either, Sir Homer. Your scheme has failed.”

“You have already agreed to marry me,” he shouted.

“I have had a change of mind in the matter, and a change of heart. I was the victim of a moment’s passion. The moment has passed.”

“Are you telling me you won’t marry me?”

“Just so, and what is more important in
your
view, I am reiterating that I do not agree to the purchase of Laversham’s. You’ll have to find some other trick to get it.”

His features drew into a sneer. “Don’t worry, I will.”

“Good night, sir.” I arose and flounced from the study, skirts billowing like a sea about me, and detracting from my dignity.

I wanted to be alone, so went upstairs to my room. I reviled myself for an idiot, to have been blind to his true purpose. What vanity on my part, to think Homer loved me. What lack of breeding to have permitted him to make love to me. And what insanity to regret the outcome. For in spite of all, I waited with some hope that refused to die, for a sound of a footstep outside my door. If it was truly myself Homer wanted, and not Laversham’s, he would come and tell me so. Forget Laversham’s, he would say, just marry me. That’s all I really want.

He didn’t come. I didn’t hear a sound from below, either. Perhaps he went to her, that other woman, his tenant’s wife, whom I had forgotten all about during the great proposal scene.

The argument with Homer, though not revealed to the family, cast a pall over life at Wyngate. Our tea parties in his study were discontinued. It was discomforting to have to sit beside him at table. We were each at pains to avoid the other as much as possible, which was most of the time. He breakfasted early; I made sure to stay in my room till he left on his morning’s business. When he returned for lunch, and on many days he did not, he arrived at odd times. Being cook’s favorite, he was catered to at whatever inconvenient hour he popped in. It was only at dinner that we had to sit beside each other. My place had been arranged at his right, and to change it would require an explanation which we were loath to give.

So we sat side by side, making stilted talk. How was I feeling today, was the usual opener. My unexciting day’s activities were mentioned. He said vaguely what he had been doing. The weather took up a few moments, impinging as it did on his own work about the place, affecting crops and so on. The family in general were kept informed on the progress of the drainage work going forth. Any small local doings were stretched out to their limit. Births—was it Mrs. Gilchrist’s fourth child, or her third? How many boys did that make, then? And the eldest, Billie—would he be ten now? Soon able to help his father with the farm work. Old Tom could use a hand around the place. Jarvis and Millie were helpful in this charade. They knew something was wrong between us, and it was inevitable that Millie would want to hear about it, Jarvis too was curious, but more discreet.

I felt alone, cut off from my old home and friends, with many troubles to beset me. Thal, who might have made a good confidante, was eliminated. I could hardly discuss her son in unflattering terms with her. But Homer was not the only weight on my mind. I thought of Norman’s inexplicable behavior, and of Millie’s tale about his mother. When the opportunity arose, I asked Jarvis about the latter. It was in the saloon one afternoon we happened to be there alone together.

“How did Norman’s mother die, Jarvis?” I asked.

“Has Millie been telling you tales?” he asked sapiently.

“Yes. She fell from a window or roof, I take it?”

“We don’t know what happened. No one saw it,” he told me, with a sorrowful shake of his head. “She was an unstable girl. After Norman was born she went into a strong state of depression. It happens sometimes with women. She was suicidal. She tried to cut her wrists. Roger had to have a nurse with her around the clock. The nurse said she tried to jump out the window one night, so they moved her to the virgin’s room, behind her own chamber. It has no window, and can only be reached through the larger bedchamber. The little virgins’ rooms were a feature of homes some years ago, to ensure the safety of a young visiting female, or the daughter of the house, if she were more wayward than she should be. Roger ordered bars for Emily’s own room, but they were not put on. She was found dead in the courtyard below. As her window was closed, we assumed she got up to the attic and jumped from there—from a window or the roof. It’s possible to climb out onto the roof. We often did it as children.”

“What about the nurse? Why wasn’t she watching her charge?”

“She had to leave the room occasionally. She was feeling unwell herself that evening. She went to ask Millie for a draught. Emily was sleeping, so she didn’t lock the door behind her. It seemed later Emily was only pretending to sleep, and when she got her chance, she escaped and jumped to her death.”

“Why not from her own bedroom window?”

“That window is not so far from the ground. The first time she made the attempt, nurse told her she would only break her legs and be a cripple for life, so she got to the attic. The nurse raised a hue and cry when she got back and found her gone. She went shouting through the house. At the inquest, it was assumed the shouting is what finally drove Emily to jump. She had strange fantasies that the world was trying to harm her. It wasn’t true. Her husband loved her very much. He was heartbroken when she died.”

“It’s strange Norman never told me about it,” I said, feeling a sympathy for the poor mother sunk in melancholia and killing herself when there was no reason.

“It is strange, for it was much on his mind when he left. Perhaps it was a mistake to keep the truth from him. He didn’t know it till he was a grown man. But he was a very infant when it happened, and who would have the heart to tell a boy such a sad story when he started to grow up? No one had. We did not speak of it, except as an accident. She fell, he thought.”

“When did he find out? Who told him?”

“I believe ‘twas the Croffts, when he was courting Eglantine, you know. They feared the mother’s condition might show up in Norman. I know her father came here discussing it with Roger. But you must not worry your head over it. Norman seemed pretty normal.”

Oh, but it was
not
normal to spend months copying out extracts and pretending they were your own work. After hearing this tale, nothing about my late husband seemed at all normal. Refusing to return to his own stately home and estate was strange and irregular behavior. The missing money and jewels were of a piece with the rest.

Keeping the truth from me too—what a wretched thing to do! But if he was mad, there was a kind of sanity in it. If he had told me, I might well not have married him. That was why he hadn’t told me before, and afterwards, why perhaps he was afraid of losing my love. And if he was mad enough to think that, he was mad enough to think he could run away from his mother’s taint by leaving Wyngate, pretending it did not exist.

We discussed it for a long time, and thought we had figured it out. “It was the discovery of his mother’s condition, and of course Eglantine’s rejection of his suit, that precipitated him into that bout of—well, what shall we call it?” Jarvis asked diffidently. “Not quite madness, but a lack of sanity. Irregular behavior.”

“Irrational behavior, you mean,” I said, forcing the dreadful word out. A lunatic. I had married a lunatic—a clever, cunning lunatic, whose main preoccupation was to conceal his state from me. It even explained why he thought me so much better than I was. I was sane, utterly sensible and sane, and I loved him. And if I were the best, most beautiful of women besides, as he would have it, and still loved him—how could he be mad? I was a vindication or proof of his sanity. I felt I was being driven towards madness myself,

“He acted quite normal till then,” Jarvis reminded me. “He graduated from university, Davinia. He was not a fool by any means.”

“There must have been something wrong with the way he acted, or the Croffts wouldn’t have turned him down. He was so eligible in other ways.”

“There were a few things—things that seem more significant now than they did at the time, actually. He could be moody—nearly despondent one week, and so merry you’d think he had won a crown the next. Did he get over that strange tendency to alternate in his moods? Why, I remember once in a fit of passion he heaved an inkwell at a footboy and knocked him senseless. Eglantine saw it too, which upset her a good deal.”

“No, he never got over it,*’ I admitted. “He was moody, violent—but never towards me. He cuffed our general maid, for which I chastised him severely, and he apologized to her. He used to throw
things
around too—books and vases. Not often, but occasionally.”

“And the drinking? He used to go on great drinking jags when he was in one of his despondent moods.”

“He didn’t drink much.”

“I wonder about those trips he used to go off on with his friend. That could have been an excuse to have a few days of heavy drinking, without your knowing it.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, though he didn’t come home looking hagged. Not with red eyes, I mean, nor looking dissipated. He was tired after. I put it down to the fatigue of traveling.”

“He didn’t go digging in the canals, at any rate. Or if he did, he made no notes.”

“Jarvis, do you think he might not have given me the estate jewelry because—what I mean is—he disliked Wyngate so much, that he didn’t want any sign of it on
me
? Does that make sense?”

He shrugged his shoulders, “It would seem to make as much sense as the rest of it. I wonder what he
did
do with it.”

“What proof is there he ever removed it from that London vault?”

“They showed Homer the signed receipts. He removed it not long after his father died. I come to think he sold the stuff. It will never be found. And then we have to ask what he did with the money.”

After we had talked a long time, I went into the topiary garden to walk and think. I spent a long, worried hour fearing Norman’s and his mother’s affliction might be visited on my child. Could I protect it by tender rearing? I thought not. If the seed were there, it would grow. It was almost a blessing Norman had died young. How I wished he had not given me this child before he went. No wonder the family were all dismayed when they discovered it. Homer’s losing his estate was a vexation for them, certainly, but to know this taint was to be carried into another generation of Blythes was infinitely worse. These weak-minded people had a tendency to die young, one way or another. Emily after one child, and Norman at thirty years. Maybe it was God’s apology for having created such imperfect beings. I looked up to see another of God’s errors smiling at me. Little Woodie had hopped out from a bush to pester me. I let him walk with me for a few moments, but it was too painful. I soon left.

The boy was becoming worrisome. I could hardly leave the house without meeting him, always smiling at me with that vacant, tilt-eyed smile. I believe he hung about Wyngate only to see me. I felt pity for him, yet with such heavy worries for the sanity of my own child, he was more than I could endure. I made the error of saying so in front of Jarvis and Millie, and the latter went pattering straight off to summon Homer from his study. In a moment she was back, asking me if I would mind going to him there.

It was unsettling, returning to the scene of our former intimacy and argument. Homer was pacing the room. His hair showed signs of having had hands run through it. “What is this, Davinia? The Durwood boy is following you around, pestering you? Millie says he jumped at you from behind a bush, frightening you.”

“He did startle me. I hadn’t seen him lurking there,” I admitted.

“I’ll speak to his parents about it. It is intolerable that you should be subjected to this in your condition. I have noticed lately you are paler, distracted.” His dark eyes scrutinized my face, while a worried frown settled between his brows. But I paid little heed to the frown. I was soon aware of another detail. That tension, electricity—whatever name can be given an intangible force that is quite palpable though invisible—was still there between us. It was an attraction of some kind. We stood two yards apart, and I think he had as much difficulty keeping the distance as I. His next words came as a total shock.

“Is
my
presence here intolerable to you as well?” he asked bluntly. “I can remove to Farnley Mote, if it would ease your burden. I can still run Wyngate from there.”

“Oh, no! Don’t leave me,” I said, the words coming spontaneously, and embarrassing me by their passion. “Don’t leave Wyngate, I mean.”

While the look of surprise was still on his face, Millie appeared at the door, come to see the excitement. “The sight of that addled boy is enough to deform Davinia’s baby,” she told Homer, taking superstition for fact. “You remember the Gorey girl, Homer, who gave birth to a girl after the coal man frightened her. The baby had a huge black mark on her arm, right where the coal man grabbed the mother. They do say he left the imprint of his five filthy fingers on the child. Ah, your lad will have slanted eyes, Davinia. See if he don’t.”