Something Better #2
Somewhere in the telling, she shifted her foot without thinking.
Nothing was there. She did not mark it at the moment.
Only afterward did she work out that the obstacle had been drawn back while she was not paying attention, that he had drawn it back when she did, that it had been his boot and not the table leg, and that he had given her the floor under the table as quietly as he had given her everything else.
“You named him?”
“Falstaff.”
“After the Shakespeare?”
“My father was very fond of the Falstaff scenes.” It came out before she could prevent it. She pressed her lips together and moved on before she lost any more ground.
He did not let her move on.
“What else did he keep?”
“Keep?”
“In the library. Read to you.”
He had caught the tell. She had not been quick enough. She took a sip of her wine to buy a breath, and when she had it, she gave him a very small answer in the hope it would satisfy him.
“Whatever he was reading at the moment, he read aloud. My mother was never in the room for any of it. Jane and I were.”
“Jane is—”
“My elder sister.”
“Of course. Miss Bennet of Longbourn. The solicitor’s report named her. I had not wanted to presume.” He did not leave a space for her to answer, which she found a kindness. “Did your father’s tastes run to novels?”
“When they were well written. He thought Fielding vulgar on principle and read him anyway. He defended Sterne. He thought Burney had been wasted on a pension.”
“Burney?”
“Frances Burney. Evelina. Cecilia.”
“I know who Burney is.”
She heard something in that — the faint edge of having been mistaken for a person who did not read, and feeling compelled to defend his honour. She fumbled with her spoon to have something to do with her hands.
“What about the poets?” he asked.
“Which poets?”
“The ones he was fondest of.”
This was the kind of question her father would have asked her. Which was a thing she had not prepared herself for, and she had no defences against from across a supper-table, in the dark, from a man she had known for a day.
“Cowper. He read The Task the way other men read scripture. Pope, when he wanted teeth. Milton, twice a year. He was not fond of Wordsworth, which was a disappointment in him that I have only lately forgiven.”
She was saying too much. She knew she was saying too much and could not stop.
“What was he reading at the end?”
It was a direct question, without apology, asked gently enough that she could not have taken offence if she had wanted to. She did not want to. She wanted, to her own surprise, to answer it.
“Johnson. He had got out Rasselas again and had been reading it in the mornings. It was the last thing. He had finished his copy twenty times over the years, and it was falling apart at the spine, and he had ordered another from Dawkins in London —” She stopped.
She had not thought about this in weeks.
“He died the afternoon he sent in the order. I cancelled it myself the second day after the funeral because I could not bear the thought of it arriving to a house that no longer had him in it.”
“I am sorry,” he said.
Elizabeth made no reply. She tried her knife, missed the poultry completely, and hoped he did not hear the sound of the meat skidding off her plate. She set the silverware down and frowned into the darkness. She would not cry. She would not.
He had mercy on her and changed the subject. “Have you walked out on the headland yet?”
“This afternoon. Only a little way. The wind was more than I had expected.”
“I have no doubt you will rise to the occasion in time.”
She narrowed her eyes in the darkness. Either Angus had not informed him of her movements, or he was very good at this. She believed the latter more than the former. And why would he assume she would rise to any occasion? He hardly knew her.
“May I ask you something?” he asked.
“I believe you purchased the right to do so.”
“Purchased? You mistake me, I…” He broke off with an exasperated-sounding sigh. “Never mind. You may refuse to answer, but I hope you will not. Are they settled? Your family, after your departure. Were there arrangements made for them?”
The fork stilled in her hand. Arrangements made for them.
Not the language of knowing only that her circumstances had changed.
The language of knowing what there had been to arrange.
She made herself continue eating, though she had lost track of the chicken cutlet.
There was still some sort of potato dish that smeared rather stubbornly across the plate, and she could not find most of it.
“Your solicitor was very thorough,” was all she said.
“Yes,” he said, and she could not tell from the single syllable whether he was confirming or deflecting.
She waited until the supper was almost finished, until the silence between them had gone more companionable than inquisitory.
Then she told him about Falstaff and the kitchen cat.
She put everything she had into it — the cat’s expression, the dog’s bewilderment, the cat’s refusal to be impressed by anything — every inflection that had ever made her father laugh.
She heard him begin to respond, catch himself, and swallow it whole.
The effort of the swallowing was audible.
He had decided to give her nothing, and giving her nothing was plainly taking more from him than he had planned.
Whatever the laugh had nearly given away last night was not a fact.
It was a manner — a way of responding that had struck her as familiar without quite coming clear.
When at last he stood, she heard the movement of his chair and the sound of his steps crossing to the corridor door.
“Goodnight,” he said from there.
“Goodnight.” She had been deciding all evening whether to say the next thing. “Falstaff may sleep in here, I assume. Since you are not using the room.”
“He may sleep wherever he wishes.”
“Good.” That was, in fact, very good. A man who did not object to his wife keeping a dog in the room probably also had no intentions of forcing himself on her.
She had been prepared to go and collect him from the kitchen whatever he said. “He is good company.”
“I am very glad to hear it.” The door closed.
She bolted it. Then she went back to the table and felt around until she found the flint and candle. She lit it and crossed the room to the other door, the one that led to the rest of the house, to the kitchen and Mrs MacLeod. Falstaff was already waiting for her.
She sighed and gave his ears an affectionate pat. She had never had a dog, and she was still not entirely sure what had made her ask for this one, except that asking and receiving had made her feel… safe.
“Come in, then,” she told him. “We shall have to do something about the mud you collect on your paws.”
She sat with Falstaff’s head warm and heavy across her feet.
The dark supper had not frightened her. Last night, it had been a thing to endure in terror, in waiting for the truth to be proved a lie.
Tonight, it was just the condition of the room.
He was on the other side of the door she had just bolted, and she would not see him again until tomorrow night.
She knew more about him than she had this morning — his height, his smell, the way he prepared, the way he listened, what he would and would not give her. The line she had not yet drawn between all those things was there in the dark.