The Asylum (28 page)

“Yes, I have had a shock—something which makes it all the more imperative that I find out what is in that packet.”

“I see. But first you must take some refreshment: a glass of wine, perhaps? Tea? Some cake?”

“Thank you, I want nothing; only my mother’s bequest.”

“Then—can you not tell me what has happened?”

“No, Mr. Lovell, I cannot.”

Still he seemed to hesitate.

“Mr. Lovell,” I said, launching upon the speech I had rehearsed many times, “I am afraid I was not entirely frank with you yesterday afternoon.”

“I suspected as much. Please be assured, Miss Ferrars, that nothing you say here will ever pass beyond these four walls.”

He leant forward encouragingly.

“You asked me if I was engaged to be married, and I said I was not. The truth is, I am secretly engaged to Mr. Frederic Mordaunt, of Tregannon House—Tregannon Asylum, as it now is—at Liskeard, in Cornwall.”

He recoiled as if I had struck him.

“Miss Ferrars, you cannot be—I am afraid I don’t believe you.”

“Sir, that is most discourteous!” I replied, with all the indignation I could muster.

“I am very sorry for it, but truly, Miss Ferrars, there is no need for this—this charade. I had already decided to give you the packet.”

If he truly meant it, why had he had not said so at the beginning? Was he trying to trap me? I could not take the risk.

“My engagement, sir, is no charade. I did not tell you yesterday because I needed time to reflect. Even Frederic’s uncle, Mr. Edmund Mordaunt, does not yet know of our engagement. And so, Mr. Lovell, my mother’s condition is fulfilled. Will you now hand over the packet?”

He rose slowly from his chair, his face a welter of conflicting emotions: doubt, confusion, concern; even, I thought, disappointment.

“Yes, Miss Ferrars, I will. I only wish I knew . . .” I thought he was going to add, “whether to believe you,” but he said no more. From the top of an unstable heap of papers on his desk, he picked up a large grey envelope and handed it to me.

It struck me, as I declined another offer of refreshment, that I need not have lied to him.

“If there is anything more I can do, Miss Ferrars,” he said as we parted, “anything at all, I hope you will not hesitate to call upon me. Here is my card. I have written my parents’ address on the back, and if you should ever find yourself at Noss Mayo, you will always find a welcome there.

“Oh, and there is one thing more. You asked me to find out if Thomas Wentworth was still alive: he died bankrupt, in November of 1879, by his own hand.”

So intent was I upon the envelope in my hand that the words scarcely registered. When I reached the landing below, I looked back and saw him still standing at the top, regarding me with troubled eyes.

Rosina Wentworth to Emily Ferrars

Kirkbride Cottage,
Belhaven
East Lothian
Friday, 18 May 1860

Dearest Emily,

I am so sorry to have left you in suspense, and can only hope that you received the notes I scribbled from King’s Cross and Dunbar. I am safe, and well, and happier than I ever imagined possible. And now I must gather my wits, and try to tell you everything as it happened.

Last Sunday was the longest of my life. I had intended to feign illness, and keep to my room to avoid my father, but there was no need of feigning; I was sick with dread and could eat nothing all day. I had, at least, the consolation of knowing that Lily had made a great impression upon the people in Tavistock Square, a widowed physician and his daughters, who live very quietly, and do not seem to move in any of the circles Clarissa and I used to frequent; they said she might start with them as soon as she liked. But such was my disordered state of mind that, when Lily offered to take my clothes to Felix’s lodging, I tormented myself all the while she was gone with visions of Felix running away with her instead of me—all the more unpardonable as I would never have escaped without her help.

Lily and I said our farewells that night. At five o’clock on Monday morning, I dressed, put on my cloak, and crept downstairs. Alfred had not taken up his post until eight the previous day, but the front door is always locked overnight, and Naylor keeps the key, so I had decided to leave by way of the area below. I stole across the first-floor landing—my father’s room is just along the corridor—and went on down into the gloom of the hall. The blood pounding in my ears sounded appallingly loud; I thought I saw movement in the shadows behind a pillar, but nothing emerged. Moving as quickly as I dared, I entered the foyer and passed through the narrow door that opens onto the servants’ staircase; I had to leave it ajar to see my way down.

The only light came from a frosted pane of glass above the area door; the rest of the passage was in darkness. I had slipped the upper bolt, and then the lower, and was turning the handle when a voice at my back said, “You can’t do that, miss; master’s orders.”

Naylor was standing a few feet away. The light fell upon his pale, smirking face, red lips parted in triumph. I wrenched open the door and darted up the steps; his hand seized my shoulder and came away with my cloak, in which he became entangled, gaining me precious seconds in which to open the area gate and slam it behind me. I heard Naylor shouting at the top of his voice; I saw Felix beginning to run toward me from a hansom twenty yards away; I heard the clash of the area gate and the thud of Naylor’s boots close behind me.

“Run to the cab!” cried Felix as he passed, but I could only turn and watch. He planted himself squarely in Naylor’s path; Naylor, who was at least a head taller, tried to dodge around him, but Felix stuck out a foot and tripped him. He was up again in a moment, flailing savagely; one blow struck Felix across the mouth and sent him staggering back. Naylor seized him by the collar and made to fling him to the ground, but Felix twisted from his grip with a rending of cloth, and it was Naylor who fell heavily; I heard the crack of his head striking the cobbles. A paper fluttered from Felix’s torn coat pocket as he turned toward me, and this time I did not hesitate. We ran side by side for the cab, and Felix lifted me bodily in.

“Victoria Station, the boat train, fast as you can!” shouted Felix as he jumped up beside me and the cab jolted forward. Looking back through the window, I saw Naylor picking himself up off the pavement, and another man emerging from the house.

“Let us hope he heard that,” said Felix, dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief. Two minutes later we were rattling along Weymouth Street, with no sign of pursuit.

We had intended to breakfast at King’s Cross and take the ten o’clock express to Edinburgh, but Felix thought it would be too dangerous to wait, with the hunt already up. If my father dismissed my note about running away to Paris as a blind, the Scottish express might be the next thing he thought of. Worse still, the paper Felix had lost was a letter from his solicitor. And so we took the first available train to Leicester, travelling as Mr. and Mrs. Childe, and made our way north from there in a series of steps, arriving very late in the afternoon at Dunbar.

From the moment we set out, it seemed absolutely right and natural to be sitting hand in hand with Felix; I never once felt—and have not since—that I was travelling with a man I barely knew. Felix kept a wary eye on the platform whenever we stopped, but my anxiety diminished as London receded behind us, until I felt only a sublime assurance that all would be well. I slept much of the way from York to Newcastle: a sleep of utter contentment in which I dreamt I was lying in Felix’s arms, and woke to find it true.

Dunbar, as you may know, is right beside the sea, very popular in the summer, but in May almost deserted; the coast is very wild and beautiful. The man who brought us from the station happened to know of this cottage, which sounded perfect: about a mile farther up the coast, a little way from Belhaven village, looking toward the sea. I wanted to drive out and see it at once, but Felix said we should think about it first, and so we took rooms in a lodging house near the castle.

And now for my confession. I have hesitated a great deal over whether to tell you, but I resolved this morning that I would. If our situations were reversed, I would want you to speak freely and trust in my love, knowing that I would never judge you harshly; and so I should place the same trust in you.

Felix had said on the train that he thought I ought to stay in a separate lodging until our three weeks were up, but I refused to be parted from him. “We may be snatched away from each other at any moment,” I replied, “so every moment together is precious.”

“But we must keep apart until we are married; you are under my protection, and I would never want you to regret—to feel that I took advantage of you.”

We said no more at the time, but in the evening, after we had dined—we were the only guests in the house, and took our supper in front of our sitting-room fire—he returned to the subject. His arm was around my shoulders, as it had been much of the day; my fingers were twined through his hair; every so often he would kiss my temple, or my cheek, and whenever our lips met, my breathing would quicken and I would twine myself closer still, and then Felix would sigh, and quiver, and gently draw back.

“You know,” he said, “if we take that cottage, it will be even harder to keep apart, living alone under the same roof.”

“I do not want to keep apart from you,” I said. “My reputation is lost forever, so far as people like the Traills are concerned, and I do not care a jot. The proprietor thinks we are married; we are pledged to each other; I am wearing your ring; and if my father should trace us; well, I do not want to die without knowing . . .”

“But my darling, even at the very worst—suppose I were to be arrested for abducting you, and assaulting Naylor, and you were carried off to your father’s house by force—it would be terrible, but we would only have to wait until you were of age; he wouldn’t dare harm you.”

“My father is capable of anything; he thinks the law applies only to lesser mortals. I have never quite shaken off the fear that he murdered Clarissa. Not with his own hands, of course, but by hiring footpads to force their carriage over that cliff. I shall never forget the look on his face when he told me she was dead.”

“But the authorities said it was an accident. You remember I heard talk of it myself in Rome: a young couple tragically lost when their horse bolted.”

“I shall try to believe it. I can only pray that she died happy—as happy as I am now,” I added, moving closer again. “So let us take that cottage tomorrow—we will be safer away from the town—and have no more talk of keeping apart.”

“Rosina—you do understand what that means?”

“Not—not exactly, but I think I can imagine. I have trusted you with my life; why should I not trust you with—in every way?”

His arms tightened around me, but then he drew a long breath and disengaged himself, his expression suddenly sombre.

“Rosina, there is something I must say to you. I meant to tell you when we next met in London, but there was no time . . .”

“Anything, so long as you are not married already.”

“No, not that, but . . . I have not always lived celibate. If only I had known we were to meet, I should never have looked at another woman, but alas . . . I have made no promises, and broken no vows, but I have been—intimate before this; I wish with all my heart I had not. So you must think on whether you still wish to marry me. No matter what you decide, I shall protect you with my life so long as there is blood in my body—”

“All I desire of you,” I said, “is to be certain that you love me with your whole heart, and that there is no other attachment—nothing in your past that could ever come between us.”

“I swear it by all I hold sacred. If there is anything—anything at all—you wish to ask of me, you have only to ask it—only—”

“Only?”

“Only that—if you really can forgive me—might it not be better to begin life together anew, without looking back?”

He rose, made up the fire, and left the room, murmuring something about the landlady and breakfast. I realised, staring into the red glow of the coals, that he had told me nothing I had not already divined. But if I knew everything about every woman he had ever embraced, would I feel any more secure in his love? Or would that knowledge prey upon me, no matter how firmly I tried to push it away, until I grew jealous of every kiss, every caress . . . ?

A coal burst in a shower of sparks, vanishing upon the instant. “You are right,” I said as his shadow fell across the couch. “Let us begin anew.”

Felix had warned me that the act might be painful; I had always vaguely assumed (I suppose because of all the talk of sin and shame) that it would have to be done in complete darkness, but we left the candles burning, and came to it so tenderly, and so gradually, that the pain was no more than momentary. We made love until dawn (now I truly understand why it is called making love), so rapturously, and with such exquisite caresses, that I feared we might wake the landlady with our cries. Marriage—between people who truly love and adore each other, I mean—must be like a secret society (I can write this, since you and Godfrey belong to it): how could anyone be ashamed of such delight, such ecstasy of body and soul, the heart overflowing with love?

We woke in each other’s arms, and drove out to Belhaven in a daze of happiness. I had never seen countryside so beautiful, or colours so rich and radiant; everything—the songs of birds, the scents of blossom, the tang of the sea—seemed so
alive,
like the first day of spring after a long drab winter, but infinitely more so.