Chapter Three
The wind off Hampstead Heath was a force to be reckoned with and by the time Beatrice reached the shelter of Highgate Cemetery her face was thoroughly numbed.
She welcomed it slightly. It seemed better than sitting at home in the warmth and swinging between feeling nothing and utter hopelessness at her situation.
Her boots squelched in the red-brown mud and she’d long given up using her umbrella but she pressed on.
It was preferable to the alternative—waiting for her husband.
Or simply getting into a disagreement with him. She couldn’t understand why, but they seemed incapable of mastering the straightforward act of communication.
The cemetery was emptier than usual, the weather providing an effective deterrent for all but the most determined mourners or the truly morbid. She supposed she was the latter.
A pair of ravens squabbled overhead, then flapped off, cawing as they vanished into a tangle of yew. She counted four carriages waiting along the road but none she recognized.
Good. She wasn’t in the mood for conversation.
She made her way down the main path, skirts heavy with rain and hem already splashed with mud. The headstones and mausoleums soon surrounded her—great gray stones and pillars looming over her like her disapproving aunts.
Ha. She’d shown them when she’d married respectable Edward.
Beatrice sighed and trudged on. If she went to them to discuss her marriage woes, they’d ask her what else she expected. Marriage was different in their day, they’d sniff. No one married for love.
It wasn’t even love she’d anticipated though. Just something more than people who simply lived in the same house. Some companionship. Some warm kisses perhaps. A little affection. Definitely respect.
Well, she had warmth. Just not in the way she’d hoped. The blasted man made her hot with fury and practically aflame with frustration.
She found her father’s grave. The headstone was modest—a rectangular block with a faint arch at the top, already dappled with green from the damp conditions.
Beloved Husband and Father.
A lie really.
She clutched her folded umbrella and knelt. The damp immediately seeped through her skirts, but she welcomed the cold. It reminded her of how she felt every time her father vanished into the arms of another woman.
That was the trouble with men like her father. Their affections arrived in bursts and vanished just as swiftly, leaving her wondering if anything she’d experienced was real. There were warm summers of laughter and sweet treats. There were trips to the country and new toys for her to play with.
And then the laughter was gone. And she’d return to London, to the smog, to her heartbroken mother, leaving the toys and the laughter behind.
Beatrice reached into her reticule and withdrew the sketchbook. Settling on the stone bench opposite, Beatrice waited, eyeing the headstone as though all the answers to her questions would come to her if she just stared long enough.
Why wasn’t she and her mother enough to keep her father home? Why wasn’t she good enough for Edward either?
The rain eased and Beatrice fished out the stump of charcoal, then angled the book against her knee, ignoring the plop of a raindrop that immediately dropped from the tree above onto the page.
She sketched her father’s headstone, then the ivy slowly crawling its way through the cluster of stones, threatening to swallow the place whole, gradually forgetting why she was here.
When she looked up again, the clouds had darkened, and the trees acquiesced to the patter of rain.
She closed the sketchbook and rose to press her hand flat against her father’s grave, feeling the indents of the letters.
She loved him. She couldn’t deny that. His absence in her life left a raw ache in her chest if she thought too hard about it.
But she hated him too. For all the hurt he’d left behind in life.
How did one carry both love and hate for someone?
Beatrice straightened, her gaze sweeping the gravestones, and shook her head. She doubted she’d ever know. After all, what answers could the dead possibly give?
On a whim, she placed the piece of charcoal in the nook of the headstone.
She liked to think her father would appreciate the gesture.
He had always loved watching her draw and relished a touch of disorder.
While a piece of charcoal wasn’t exactly chaos, it did slightly disrupt the neatness of the headstone.
She turned away, a sinking feeling settling low in her gut when she remembered she’d have to go home to an empty house and continue her vigil of waiting for her husband.
Beatrice made it three yards before the sky let loose an even heavier flurry of rain, forcing her under the shelter of a stone angel.
She huddled under its wing and watched the rain fill the ruts in the path.
In the far corner of the cemetery, a huge tomb caught her eye.
It wasn’t necessarily the grandest she had seen at Highgate but it was the cracked facade that snared her attention—a jagged fault line from the very front all the way to the slanted eaves.
She moved away from the angel and peered at the faded lettering. It must have been here since the early days of Highgate becoming a cemetery as it was marred by stains of moss and lichen and nearby tree roots had begun to crawl their way around the base.
“Bit grand for the afterlife, isn’t it?” a voice croaked from behind her.
Beatrice started, then turned to find the cemetery’s caretaker watching her from beneath the dripping brim of his battered cap. She’d seen him on her previous visits but they’d never talked before.
“I suppose it helps the family to know their loved ones will be remembered for years to come.”
The old man chuckled, displaying a gap where his front tooth had once presided. “Fancy stonework don’t impress the worms.”
She smiled despite herself. “Has someone been at the grave?” She nodded toward the collapsed soil at the base of the grave.
“Ah, that one. No, no. No grave robbers here, I promise you. I keep a stern watch.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Besides, it’s too old to rob. They wouldn’t find anything useful there.”
Beatrice suppressed a shudder as the idea of what grave robbers would find useful. She couldn’t really complain about the man’s pitiless manner, given he worked day in, day out at a graveyard and she had chosen this odd place to spend her time.
“I suppose it’s the tree roots causing the problem.”
The caretaker’s eyes glinted and he leaned on his spade. “They say the dead don’t like to be forgotten, miss.”
“Who says that?”
He chuckled. “You’re here, ain’t you?”
She felt suddenly foolish, a grown woman loitering in a cemetery and conversing about the dead with a man who likely thought her quite mad.
“My, uh, my father is buried here.”
“Precisely my point.”
She started to speak up in disagreement, but then shut her mouth. The man had a point. In a way, she was indeed being haunted. The actions her father took against her mother were affecting her own marriage, even long after he had died.
“You be careful out here, miss. This place remembers.”
With a nod, he turned and squelched off toward the main path, whistling tunelessly as he went.
Beatrice watched him until he disappeared behind a hedge, then studied the broken tomb anew.
She ought to go home but something about the neglected grave called to her.
Setting up her umbrella as a sort of shelter, she pulled out her sketch book and delved into her reticule for a pencil, feeling it was a touch of fate that had led her to leaving her charcoal at her father’s grave.
Somehow, this sketch needed sharper lines anyway.
She sketched the tomb’s profile, then the crack, exaggerating the violence of the split so that the structure seemed nearly torn in two.
She shaded in the sag of earth at the foot of the grave, darkening the lines until her hand ached. She wondered if this grave was truly forgotten, if all those who had known the person were long dead or if the relatives had simply given up remembering.
When she closed her sketchbook, she realized the drizzle had stopped.
The cemetery was quiet and the sky was clearing.
She stood, wiped her hands on her petticoat, and restored her hat as best she could.
She cast one last glance at the tomb and folded up her umbrella, then made for the exit, taking care not to slip in the mud.
When she arrived at the gates, she acknowledged a pair elegantly dressed in black who gazed at her with wide eyes and she imagined she looked rather ghostly with her pale complexion and drenched clothes and hair.
By the time she reached home, her hair had dried slightly but still hung in sad curls around her neck. As Mrs. Prewett opened the door, she took in Beatrice’s appearance with a fleeting lift of her eyebrows, but confined herself to a brisk, “Can I fetch you tea, my lady?”
Beatrice shook her head and divested herself of her hat and gloves. “I’ll be upstairs,” she said, already climbing the stairs and unbuttoning her jacket. “Some warm water would be much appreciated, though.”
“Beatrice?”
She started, pausing halfway up the stairs and pivoted to spot Edward in the hallway.
“You’re here.”
The words were silly and she regretted them. They were said as though he wasn’t allowed to be in his own home.
He gave a slight smile as if he recognized the foolishness of her comment, then laced his hands behind his back. He wore no jacket or cravat as though he had been home for some time now and if Beatrice thought about it, she caught the lingering smell of his cologne.
“Unusual weather for autumn,” he said.
“When is the weather in London ever normal?” Beatrice replied.
“I hope your outing was fruitful.”
She felt herself bristle—was he mocking her? But there was no malice in his tone, just a distant weariness.
“Fine.”
He didn’t reply and Beatrice turned to continue up the stairs when he called her name again.
“A word, if I may?”
She swallowed hard and debated dashing upstairs to her bedroom but that would be childish. She just didn’t want another disagreement, that was all, and for some reason, whenever she talked to Edward it always became tangled no matter how good her intentions were.
She gave a slight nod and he ushered her into the drawing room, motioning to the fire.
“I won’t keep you long. You look soaked through.”
“I’m fine.”
They stood for a moment in front of the fire, the only sound the crackle of the flames and the tick of the mantel clock. Beatrice had the urge to flee, to shed her ruined dress and scrub her hands clean, but Edward spoke before she could move.
“Beatrice…Bea…”
She blinked at the soft use of a nickname only her mother used.
“Will you dine with me tomorrow evening?”
“Dine with you?”
“Yes. At Verrey’s?”
“Verrey’s,” she repeated.
She hadn’t been there for an age. Not since they had wed. Did he recall that they’d shared a meal there once, before the idea of a marriage between them had been floated and that they had talked all night, so much so that her mother thought Beatrice was head over heels for Edward?
Beatrice searched his face, hunting for the catch.
He looked older than she remembered, and tired.
For a wild second she wanted to refuse, to punish him with her absence as he had punished her.
She caught her bedraggled reflection in the window and exhaled.
A night of fine dining and elegant evening wear was something they had yet to try.
“If you wish,” she finally said.
“I do.”
“Very well,” she said. “We can dine out.”
He paused for a moment as if surprised by her response. “Eight o’clock, then.”
She watched him, waiting for more, but he simply stepped aside to let her retreat upstairs. There was no triumph in his posture but she was certain she spotted a little relief in his gaze. She went up to her room, and closed the door behind her.
She did not know what tomorrow would bring.
Perhaps nothing would change. Perhaps the tombs of Highgate had more life than her marriage ever would.
Still, for the first time in months, she felt something approaching anticipation.
It would be pleasant to wear a beautiful gown and dine under the warm haze of a glittering chandelier.
Perhaps then, Edward would finally see she was worth coming home for.