Chapter 11
Eleven
Her king wielded the executioner’s sword in the public square and beheaded two traitors—a general and a privy councillor.
That night, the concubine held her king and did not shame him for his tears.
— The Concubine and Her King. Unpublished MS.
Susannah found it difficult to dream up anything to write down when it felt like her own life had turned into a storybook. She would have thought the exact opposite, but it seemed simple surroundings inspired her fancy, while luxurious ones could not be improved on by her imagination.
She had a bedchamber fit for a queen, although she had been told that it was not in fact the bedchamber that had been built especially for Queen Elizabeth. She was grateful because she wouldn’t have been able to sleep a wink in a bed that had once held a queen.
But, still, her room was the size of the downstairs of the Beasley cottage, and the canopied bed had twice the breadth of any bed she’d ever seen.
The contents of her sack took up scant inches in the clothes press, and everything was soft and silken and tinted in a blue that was halfway between the pale ice of the earl’s eyes and the dark blue around that lighter shade.
Not that she had been thinking about the earl’s eyes.
Lord Ashthorpe himself had given her a tour of the house, including the large library where a table had been designated for her writing. What her father would have given to have the use of this library! His first born, most likely.
Paintings dotted almost every wall, but the ones in the gallery held her interest the most. They were portraits of the Delameres going back generations, and there was one of the earl as a young lieutenant in uniform and another with him older and standing behind a seated woman who held a very small child in her lap.
A young boy stood beside her, leaning into her.
In that painting, the earl touched no one, and no one was touching him. He seemed very apart.
“Which is Mina’s father?” Susannah asked. She deliberately did not ask about the beautiful blonde woman, the countess, his late wife.
“The older boy. Hal was about five then, and Charles was almost one.”
“Both are very like you. But Charles a little more, I think.”
The earl moved to the next painting.
“Here is my brother and his wife. This was painted before their son was born.”
Susannah had already learned that the earl’s brother Charlie and his son, yet another Henry, had died when the man she knew as Ashthorpe was still in the army.
“And your sister-in-law? Where does she live?”
“In London, I believe.”
“You don’t see her?”
The earl almost smiled. “I see no one.”
“Mina is enough company for you, then.”
Was there a hesitation before he answered? “Yes, she is the best kind of company.”
He took her through the many drawing rooms and the billiards room, music room, ballroom, dining room, chapel, the Queen Elizabeth bedchamber. He even took her through the cellars and the kitchens where the kitchen maids looked at her with wonder.
I know, she wanted to say to them. I know I belong with you and not with him.
But, besides her own bedchamber, her favorite rooms were the earl’s study, the little library, and Mina’s nursery.
The study was a favorite because it was his. It smelled of him. He told her something about the desk and its history, but she didn’t listen because she was busy sniffing up air that was full of Henry.
No, not Henry. The earl. His lordship.
She liked the little library because that was where he and she ate their dinners and talked. And she laughed, and he tolerated her laughing. It also held the cabinet with no key, and Susannah quickly learned that was Mina’s favorite place to hide in a game of hide-and-seek.
“I like it,” Mina said. “I imagine it’s the magician’s cupboard in Further Adventures, and it will take me anywhere I want to go.”
Mina’s nursery was where Susannah and the earl read to Mina in the evenings.
Mina did not sit in Susannah’s lap—that privilege was quite rightly reserved for her grandfather—but Mina and Susannah could sit snugly side by side in a big chair, despite Susannah’s own round bottom, and hold a book together and read.
And the nursery was where Susannah saw her own stories bound and printed just like proper books for the first time.
“I’m sorry they’re not better specimens,” the earl said. “A bit worn.”
“They’re marvelous,” she said, touching the covers, turning the pages. “Is that terrible to say that about my own work?”
“Terrible,” he agreed.
“I’ve asked Grandfather to send away to London for new ones,” Mina said. “Because these aren’t mine, and I want my own.”
Susannah looked to the earl, who said, “These were Charles’ books when he was young.”
“And I don’t want to wear them out in case he wants them back,” Mina said. “I am going to be very careful with my new Tommy Treadwell books and not get them dirty or cat-ear any of the pages.”
Susannah loved those evenings sitting in the nursery, either reading or listening to the earl or Mina read.
On occasion, she had to tell herself that she mustn’t be sad or envious that other people got to do this with their families all the time or that the earl and Mina would continue to read together after she left.
She must not be mawkish about anything. She needed to remember how lucky she was to be a small part of this, to bear witness to the great love between the two of them.
The earl also took Susannah over the extensive grounds bit by bit, and he showed her the rose garden one fine afternoon. Mina skipped ahead of them on the gravel path, and Susannah asked the size of the estate.
“Ten thousand acres,” he said. “Including the farms. The gardens and lake and park are three hundred acres or so, and there are about two thousand acres of forest and meadows.”
Her eyes went wide. “The park is three hundred acres? I’m glad I’m not the one tasked to cut that grass.”
“Yes, there’s a dozen men who do it, and, as soon as they finish, they have to start again. I’m considering letting more of the land go to meadow.”
She nodded vigorously. “I think that’s an excellent idea.”
“I’m afraid Mina and I have scarcely allowed you any time to yourself, Miss Beasley.”
Susannah was the one who needed to apologize. She was here to write a storybook for the earl’s granddaughter, but more than a week had gone by, and she had still not started.
He continued, “You must tell me if we are pests.”
“I’m the pest. Taking your money and then also making you entertain me. I’m so good at delaying my work that I may have to give back those half-crowns yet.”
She laughed, and she could hear the false note in her laughter and was embarrassed.
“There isn’t any hurry. At least, not on our part.” But the earl sounded worried, so she looked at him and finally saw how he had gotten those lines in his forehead.
“Mina is growing.” She smiled to ease his worry and nodded her head towards the little girl, who was now wandering among the rosebushes, singing to herself. “I must write the book before she is too old and only wants stories of lovers meeting at midnight in a haunted castle.”
“I’m sure you could write that one, too,” he said and then looked as if he regretted saying it. He cleared his throat. “Is there any urgency for you? Do you need to go back to Much Wemby?”
“Yes.” A silence. “I mean, eventually, I will have to go home.”
But Much Wemby wasn’t home anymore, not really, and not just because the Beasley cottage was actually in Little Wemby.
The whole place hadn’t been a home to Susannah for a long time.
But it was home for Nolly and Hodge, and if they ever came back, she had to be there because she didn’t want either of them to risk their lives going into the village to ask where she and Dando had gone.
Susannah would have to leave Bledsoe Park—and the earl and Mina—before Dando left the cottage. She’d write her brother tomorrow so he knew to write back and warn her if he was about to move to Charingham.
The earl’s brow was still furrowed, so she added, “But I don’t need to go home for a good bit.” She must get started on the book.
“Yes,” Henry said, and his voice was rough, not cool and clear. “Home is best.”
“Your home is best, certainly,” she teased.
“It is a great gift to live here. But it’s also a burden.” Then, “Bledsoe Park is why I married my wife. Diana was of the Cooke family.”
Susannah shook her head. That meant nothing to her.
“The Cookes were and are ship-builders with a vast fortune, and I needed Diana’s dowry when I became earl. My brother had married for love, but I did not see how I could do the same. I didn’t have time to find both love and money in the same woman.”
“But . . .” She was lost. “Your wife was very beautiful.”
“Yes.”
“You must have come to love her.”
“I did not. She was . . .” He paused and looked to the side, away from Susannah. “She was vain and loved attention and enjoyment above all things. And I was harsh and inflexible and could not accommodate her. After Charles was born, she lived in London, and I lived here.”
Poor Henry. “Where did your sons live?”
“I wanted them here. But I knew I was a bad father, and—”
She would not let him say such a thing about himself. “I cannot believe that of you. You’re wonderful with Mina.”
“Yes.” His eyes were a little glassy, but he made one of his almost smiles.
“I will not waste my second chance. And the determination not to do so has changed me for the better. No, Mina herself has changed me for the better. She has made me curious. Made me see the world as she does. Made me have new experiences. I would never have had occasion to meet you, for example.”
Susannah felt the warmest kind of pleasure and not because he had said meeting her, insignificant her, was something that was for the better. It was because he was talking to her, telling her about himself.