Chapter 27 #2
“He was kind. I remember he was kind. I could not recognize his face now if you paid me, but I remember he was kind.”
She was silent for a moment.
“The churchyard,” she continued. “A fortnight later. Celia was two weeks old, cradled in the arms of a wet nurse whose name I had not known until that afternoon. I had not thought to ask for it. I just stood at the graveside and understood two things: I was eleven, and from that morning on, I was a mother of sorts.”
“Anne—”
“And I did it, William. I did it. I was not good at it, at first. How could I have been? Especially without my father, but I did it. And then there were the years with my uncle.”
“You have not spoken of those. Not much.”
“No, I have not. Not properly. I will not tell you all of it now. I do not think I could, and I do not think you could hear it. But I shall tell you this: there were things I did in those years, and things I did not do, and I did them and did not do them chiefly to keep his attention turned away from Celia. Do you understand what I am telling you?”
A pause.
“Yes,” he gritted out. “I understand.”
“Do not say anything about it. Please. Not now.”
“I shall not. But only per your request,” he growled.
“Then came Lambridge. The damned engagement. And the night I packed two small trunks, took Celia’s hand, and walked out of the servants’ door…”
“Yes, that I know.”
“So,” she said, “now I come to the thing I have not said to you.” She looked down at the edge of the desk. Her hand flattened against it. “I am afraid, William.”
“Of what?”
“Of this. Of children. Of bearing one. Of not bearing one. Of both and all at once. That is the thing I could not… You must understand. That afternoon in the schoolroom, when you spoke of a larger table, when you said it so easily… A larger table, as though it were a thing one could simply have.”
“We do not need to—”
“No, I must say this part properly. All these years between eleven and now, I believed that I had made my peace with it. I had told myself I would never bear a child. I had told myself this was a grief, and I had grieved it, and I had put it away. I was very certain I had put it away, William. I was proud of myself for it.”
“And you had not.”
“I had not. I had only set it aside. Do you understand the difference?”
“Yes, I truly do,” he said as he thought of his own reservations, how he had never thought he would marry again or be so happy.
“When you said it… It came up out of the floor, William. The whole of it. As though it had never gone anywhere. As though it had only been waiting for someone to say the words that would lift it out.”
“I did not know. I am sorry. I did not mean to—”
“How could you have known? I had not told you. I had not told myself.”
She swallowed thickly.
“Then one morning,” she rasped. “Last week. I woke, and I knew. I knew I was not with child.”
“I understand.”
“And the first thing I felt was relief.”
“That is natural.”
“Relief, William. A great, rushing relief. As though I had been spared something. And I hated myself for it! I hated myself for it instantly. Because on the heels of the relief came the other thing. Which was grief, the understanding that a thing I had told myself I did not want had been, in fact, a thing I had wanted all along. That I had wanted it so much that my own mind had hidden it from me for years because I could not have borne to want it and be denied it.”
“Oh, my love.”
How the word love comes so naturally.
“And I sat with it. For days, I sat with it. I did not know how to tell you. I did not know how to tell you either of the two things, the relief or the grief, let alone both.”
“Why did you not?”
“Because I was afraid, William. I keep saying I was afraid. Please pay attention. Attend.”
“I am attending,” he said, stifling a laugh at her ability to keep him in his place.
“Then Mrs. Alderton came to the door of the morning room.”
“Oh?”
“And she shared wisdom with me.”
“She has a way of saying things.”
“I shall not repeat it. And I sat at the writing desk afterward for a long time. A long time, William. I do not know how long.”
“And you wrote to me.”
“I wrote to you. I tried. God, I tried to put into the letter what I have just put badly into this room.” She heaved a sigh.
“So, now you know. Now you know all of it. That is what I wished to say. That is… that is the whole of it, William. I did not want you to think—Oh, I did not want you to go on thinking that I do not want you. I do, so much.”
“Anne, come here. Please.”
She did not move at once.
“Please,” he said again, so softly.
She came, and he rose from the settee. He reached out carefully, because his hand was not entirely steady, and took both of her hands in both of his.
“Your letter is in my coat,” he said. “In the inner pocket. It has been in there for three days. I have not been able to open it, Anne. I was going to open it last night. I was going to open it in the chair by the fire at Merrivale’s, and I just…
I could not. I could not bring myself to open it without being in the same house with you.
It was foolish. I understand that it was foolish. I was so afraid that you were—”
“William.”
“Hush. A moment, Anne. It is my turn. In fact, I have ridden twenty-six miles for this moment.”
“All right.”
“I was wrong. About the way I have been these past days. About the damn dinner. About the… the bloody way I did not offer you my arm.”
She looked away.
“Anne, look at me. I was wrong. What you said to me in the schoolroom, what you said when you were weeping in my arms, that was not a rejection. I knew it was not a rejection. I knew it in the moment you said it.”
“Truly, it wasn’t,” she croaked.
“And then, I went into my study and closed the door, and I sat at my desk with a ledger open in front of me. For a reason I do not know, I permitted myself to hear a voice that was not my own. It was telling me that you did not want it—of course you would not, because I am… because my face… because I am who I am.”
“William, your face is beautif—”
“I had been married once before, Anne, to a woman who taught me very thoroughly that I was not a man to be wanted. And I had thought, like you, that I had put it away. I had thought I was past it. And I found that afternoon that I was not past it. That I was still, in some part of me, a man who expected not to be wanted, and who heard in what you said a confirmation of what he had been expecting. And that was not fair to you, Anne. It was not anywhere near fair to you. You had told me you were frightened, and I made it about myself. I am sorry for it. I am very sorry for it.”
“Oh, William…”
“There is one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“At Merrivale’s last night, there was a boy at dinner.
Their eldest. A student at Eton. He…” He stopped, choking up a bit at the thought.
“I watched him at dinner, Anne. I watched him sit through a dinner with his parents, perfectly correct, perfectly silent, ignored. And I understood, watching him, what kind of house I have got now. What kind of house you have made of mine. Until last night, I did not understand what you had done, Anne. What you and Celia have done. What Felicity is now that she was not before. I understood it last night in another man’s dining room.
And I understood, at the same time, what I want. ”
“What do you want?”
“What I have, Anne. Which is just this. You. Our girls. Whatever comes, whatever does not come, whoever else this house does or does not someday hold. This. You. I rode home this morning to tell you that.”
She was weeping quietly, without fuss, the tears simply streaming down her face like soft raindrops. He let go of her hand and lifted his own. With his thumb, he very gently wiped her cheek.
“Oh, William,” she hiccupped.
“Yes, my sweet?”
She came into his arms as if she were coming home. She burrowed into his chest, her face pressed against the front of his traveling coat. His arms closed around her, tight and warm. He rested his cheek atop her head and held her.
Outside the door, a small voice said, in a whisper that was not really a whisper at all, “Felicity, I cannot hear anything.”
“That is because we are not meant to hear anything, Celia.”
“But how will we know if they have fixed it?”
“One can tell. Afterward. From their faces.”
“Oh,” Celia said.
A pause, and Anne and William giggled together.
“Felicity,” Celia said finally.
“Yes.”
“I am very hungry,” she sighed.
“So am I,” Felicity agreed.
“Shall we go and have cake?” Celia added.
“Yes, I think we shall.”
“They could be a while. We can return later.”
“I suppose we are truly trapped here,” Anne laughed as two sets of small feet retreated with great ceremony down the passage.
After a moment, William’s shoulders started shaking as he chuckled. He did not loosen his hold on her, but laughed into her hair. She laughed harder into his coat, and at some point, their laughter became something else.
He tilted her face up to his and kissed her. Suddenly, Anne stepped back to look up at him. She kept one hand on the lapels of his coat, as if to assure herself that he was still within reach.