Not Quite a Husband (31 page)

Bryony wept. For sorrow. And pure, startling joy: Toddy had been happy.

She’d always imagined her father as a distant, neglectful husband. She’d believed Toddy lonely, a
vibrant young woman married to a much older man who had little appreciation for her liveliness and spirit. But the letter alluded to a husband who treasured his bride, a Toddy who was indulgently fond of him, and an affectionate, comfortable marriage.

It was all she ever wanted for Toddy, that her days on earth had been filled with sunshine, and that she had known how much she’d been esteemed and loved.

When she’d read the letter a dozen times, she decided that it was enough for the night. Slipping the letter back into the envelope, she discovered that there was another sheet of paper inside.

She kissed the note.
Tomorrow
, she thought.
Tomorrow, my love
.

T
he brothers Marsden spent the evening talking. Will had gained a seat in the House of Commons in the last election, bucking the Marsdens’ tradition of support for the Tories by becoming a Liberal MP. He and the more conservative Jeremy argued good-naturedly about the policies of the government in South Africa and on the frontiers of India. Leo and Matthew, neither of whom had much interest in politics, spoke of the recent changes in Paris and London and occasionally heckled Will and Jeremy when the latter two’s debate became bogged down in minutiae.

“Gentlemen, at least let us have some grandiloquence, if you are going to discuss the fate of nations,” said Matthew.

“I’m saving my bombast for the House of
Commons,” Will quipped. “The Wyden house isn’t big enough for all the hot air I can unleash at a moment’s notice.”

Leo laughed. Of all the Marsden brothers, Will was the one who took himself the least seriously, who loved ribbing his brothers as much as he loved ribbing himself.

After that they went to Jeremy’s club. It was while they dined at the club that Michael Robbins’s name came up. Leo had met the young journalist briefly in Nowshera. Robbins, a correspondent for the
Pioneer
and the
Times
, had asked Leo some questions on the siege of Chakdarra.

Will immediately identified the young man as godson to Lady Vera Drake, the wife of his old employer Mr. Stuart Somerset. In the morning, Will telephoned Mr. Somerset to let him know that Leo had encountered Robbins, and Mr. Somerset said that his wife would be extremely pleased if Leo would call on her in person.

Will, having eloped with Mr. Somerset’s onetime fiancée, could never say no to Mr. Somerset. And Leo could never say no to Will—or Matthew, for that matter. It didn’t matter that he’d been only fourteen when their father threw out Will and Matthew; Leo had been so invested in proving that he was the
earl’s son that he’d forgotten, for some time, that he was also Will’s and Matthew’s brother.

And so it was that the first person on whom Leo paid a call on the first morning of the rest of his life was not Bryony, but Lady Vera, whose residence on 26 Cambury Lane was only a few doors down from his and Bryony’s old house. As his carriage wheeled past the lifeless 41 Cambury Lane, even though he braced himself for it, he still shuddered somewhere inside.

At 26 Cambury Lane, Lady Vera received him most cordially. She was a lovely woman in her late thirties, attired in a stylish lavender morning gown. She spoke in such marvelously molded syllables, moved with such a delicate grace, and seemed to belong so overwhelmingly in her elegant green-and-white drawing room that it was impossible for Leo to imagine that she’d spent much of her adult life as a lowly cook.

They exchanged pleasantries. Lady Vera condoled with him on the passing of Mr. Asquith. Leo inquired into her recent stay in the country, where Will and Lizzy and their children had spent a week with the Somersets and their children.

“Will tells me that the little Marsdens and the little Somersets fight spectacularly,” Leo said.

Lady Vera chuckled. “I’m afraid that is true. But they make up beautifully too.”

“And are your children well?”

“Very well. When they are not fighting spectacularly with the little Marsdens, they fight spectacularly with each other. I’d always thought an elder sister and a younger brother would make a most tender pair. Alas, they are savages, the both of them.”

She poured tea, and offered Leo possibly the best tea cake he’d ever tasted.

“I understand you met my godson in Nowshera, Mr. Marsden.”

“Yes, at the time we met he’d just returned from Tochi Valley. I believe he’d been assigned to cover the punitive expeditions that General Blood would lead to Upper Swat.”

“That has already happened. I follow his columns in the
Times
avidly, as you can imagine. He will go with the troops on the punitive expedition against the Mohmands next, that is, if he hasn’t left already.”

Leo wondered why Lady Vera needed to speak to him when she already had a good idea of her godson’s movements by reading his reportage.

“But newspaper reporting is always whittled down to only dates and places and action,” said Lady Vera. “It is not much use when I’m primarily
interested in the reporter’s frame of mind. Michael is a brilliant young man. I’d hoped that he would attend university. But he was eager to see the world and to leave his mark on it.”

Will had told Leo that Michael Robbins was the adopted son of Mr. Somerset’s gamekeeper in Yorkshire, but had been educated at Rugby, one of the most prestigious public schools in the country. That knowledge, along with what Leo had observed of the young man, gave him a certain insight into Lady Vera’s unspoken concern.

“You are afraid his ambition might get the better of him, ma’am?”

Lady Vera smiled. “I see you are as astute as your brother, Mr. Marsden. Yes, I do worry about it. There are people in this world for whom nothing he ever does will ever overcome the irregularity of his birth. I worry that he should try too hard and that opinions of these hidebound idiots should come to matter too much for him.”

The way she phrased things, Leo wondered if the opinion of a young lady was somehow involved. He did not ask it. “He is yet young, ma’am, and the world is an exciting place for an ambitious young man. When we met, he was eager to be closer to the action, to report firsthand rather than take accounts from those who had been there. Perhaps when he
reaches his middle years, he would look upon his place in the world and wonder whether he’d been given a fair shake, but as of this moment, I’d say he is enjoying spreading his wings and testing his mettle.”

Lady Vera took small sips of her tea. “You are right. I suppose I can ask for nothing more right now than that he should glory in his youth and the opportunities he’s been given.”

She had not been truly reassured.

“Toward the end of our conversation,” said Leo, “Mr. Robbins let slip that he had not been sleeping well. He’d given up his room at the lodging house to a lady traveling by herself, who’d come into Nowshera too tired to stand, when Nowshera was overrun and beds impossible to find. When the lady left, the landlord had given the room to someone else, leaving Mr. Robbins to sleep in rather atrocious places.”

“Dear me,” said Lady Vera.

“He didn’t know it, but that lady was Mrs. Marsden. And I, for one, will always be grateful that he helped her when there was absolutely nothing in it for him.”

Lady Vera set down her tea. She reached forward and took Leo’s hands. “Thank you, Mr. Marsden.
Sometimes I forget that beneath Michael’s ambition, there is not a void, but much kindness. Thank you for reminding me.”

Forty-one Cambury Lane made Bryony shiver. But it wasn’t the air, musty and damp from the lack of occupation, nor was it the empty rooms, echoing with her footsteps. It was the memories, all the unhappiness that seemed embedded in the very walls, the failure of her marriage writ large in the cobwebs that dangled from ceilings and banisters.

She didn’t know why she was here. In the morning there had been a letter from her solicitor, informing her that the house had been sold at last and the buyers would take possession within the week. Then there had been a note from Leo saying he would be slightly delayed as he had agreed to pay a call to Will’s old employer. A few minutes later she’d found herself climbing into a carriage, the spare key to the house clutched tightly in her hand.

A complete mistake. What she wanted was to forever close the door on the past, the way one looked upon the deceased one last time before lowering the lid of the coffin. But here, the past hunted her, with clammy tendrils and cold arrows.

Here was the dining room in which they’d given
their last dinner together. Such had been his effervescence and charisma that those seated near her had strained mightily toward him, desperate to catch his bons mots and clever remarks. Her feeble attempts at conversation had not only gone unheeded, they’d gone unheard. She’d sat in a room full of people, completely ignored, completely alone—and had known in her heart that he had meant for it to happen precisely as it did.

Here was the bedchamber in which their lovemaking had gone from merely awful to disastrous. The last time he’d come to her while she was still awake, she’d shaken so much that in the middle of it he’d scrambled off the bed and left, throwing a lamp halfway across the room on his way out. There, that dent left by the shattered lamp, still there.

And here was the study in which she had had to sit and read the letter from Bettie Young, an actual written record of the day her happiness died.