Chapter 15 #3
At any other time, this little revelation would have diverted Thomas tremendously.
Why—and when—had Micha ever learned to cook?
During his travels? His hard times? It was such a strange skill for a gentleman to have acquired.
And to think, Thomas wanted to say, you claimed to have no accomplishments.
Instead, he simply slipped his fingers free from Mrs. Clark’s and went to take the tray from Micha’s cold, white-knuckled hands. “Thank you.”
Micha caught him by the wrist and held him there, just long enough to stare so fiercely at him that Thomas felt quite breathless.
Whatever Micha was looking for, he’d found, because he pulled away abruptly and threw himself down onto the window seat, from where he silently watched the ravages of the storm.
Mrs. Clark and Hope fell upon the food with a gusto only lightly checked by decorum, and Thomas did not trouble them with further questions until they were done.
He would have tried to draw Micha into the little circle by the fire, but he looked so remote, and so hostile, he did not dare.
At the very least, it gave Thomas a little time to consider what might properly be done.
By the time she was done with the food, Mrs. Clark was still drawn, bedraggled, and a little too thin, but colour had returned to her cheeks. George had been correct, Thomas realised—she was a remarkably handsome woman.
“Would you be willing,” asked Thomas at last, pondering aloud, “to consider taking some employment here in the village?”
Micha’s head snapped round.
“Truth always catches up with you in the end,” she said, “and your parishioners would not thank you for making me a part of their lives. Hope needs—”
“Her mother?” suggested Thomas, mildly.
“Yes,” agreed Hope, stuffing the last hunk of bread into her mouth. “I do.” There was a pause while she chewed and swallowed. “I do not know my father,” she told Thomas. “I usually say he has died, but Mama says I am not to lie to you.”
“I appreciate that.” Thomas tried unsuccessfully to match the gravity of her tone.
“I know that it is a sin to lie,” she went on. “But sometimes one must be prag-prag . . .”
“Pragmatic?”
“Yes. That means doing what is sensible. And besides,” she continued, doggedly, “since I have never had a father, I do not count it any sort of loss. Whereas I love Mama dearly.”
“Nobody will take you away from your mother.”
Hope nodded. “Good. For I would take that very ill indeed.”
Thomas flinched from her stone-cold eyes. “I think, perhaps, nobody would dare take you away from your mother.”
And then, as sudden as sunlight, the girl smiled. This was something else Thomas had experienced but little, and it left him slightly dazzled and more than slightly gratified. He felt as though he had passed some test he had not previously realised was important.
“I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Clark. “I’m afraid I have encouraged her to be wilful, and . . . she reads too much.”
“That’s nothing to apologise for.” And once again, Thomas felt the unexpected, extraordinary warmth of Hope’s approval.
It had never before occurred to him children could be reacted to the same as any other sort of person.
That they could be liked. Not that Hope, with her intense eyes and cold demeanour, was particularly likeable.
But, somehow, he found he liked her regardless.
“I’m afraid”—he gathered himself—“something continues to trouble me. Did my brother dismiss you?”
Mrs. Clark said nothing. The fire crackled. The rain battered the windows with almost biblical fury. Finally, she gave a short, sharp nod.
Thomas frowned. “Because of your past?”
Another nod.
It made no sense. George had never shown any interest in domestic matters.
Why would he go to such trouble to look into Mrs. Clark?
And George was troubled, frustrated, careless.
He was not truly cruel. Was he? Some instinct, perhaps one of self-preservation, made Thomas want to let the subject drop.
Since Mrs. Clark was clearly reluctant to discuss it with him, it benefited no one to press the matter.
But he also knew that it was cowardice that held his tongue and selfishness that made him seek excuses for doing so.
“George is no man to stand in judgement of the conduct of others. What business is it of his? How did he know?”
There was a very long silence. Thomas felt, rather than saw, Micha’s eyes upon them.
“I’m sorry,” murmured Mrs. Clark. “I do not know.”
Micha rose from the window seat, like a shadow blown by the wind, grabbed the untouched brandy Thomas had poured out earlier, and downed it in a single gulp.
“Could you not have reasoned with him?” Thomas heard himself speaking as if from great distance. There was a note of pleading in his voice that made it sound like the voice of a stranger. “I’m sure if he understood he would not have wished to ruin you or—”
“Please,” interrupted Mrs. Clark, in a stifled voice. “It was simply not possible. Don’t press me further.”
And then suddenly, with a sickening kind of lurch, like stepping off a cliff, Thomas remembered. The gleam in George’s eyes. She’s a stunner, man.
“Did he . . .” It was all he managed to choke out.
“No,” she said, quickly. “No.”
“But he tried?”
Her hands twisted together and then apart. “This serves no purpose but pain.”
“I want to know.”
“He made it a condition of my continued employment, yes. And I refused.” She ducked her head and then looked up again.
Thomas caught the tension in the curve of her neck.
“Not because I care so greatly for what is left of my honour, or my body, but because I would not trust your brother to have power over me. The man cannot govern himself.”
George had always been headstrong. But that was no longer a truth that mattered. “There is some darkness in him. And I cannot always reach him. Not since our brother died.”
“If he were my brother,” said Mrs. Clark softly, “I would fear for him.”
Thomas was suffocating on secrets. Edward.
George. Himself. It was almost too much to bear.
He wanted Micha. To be held. To know, if not comfort, pleasure as deep as oblivion, sins sweeter than paradise.
Micha was not an analgesic, but Thomas was almost sure that if someone didn’t touch him, he would shatter like glass.
The worst of it was, the deepest betrayal, the most unspeakable thing, the wrong beyond all others, was that nothing Mrs. Clark was telling him was a revelation.
Nor even a shock. In some fashion, with his heart, if not his mind, Thomas had always known.
But he had done as he was bidden: kept his peace, kept his silence, and turned away from truth in the name of duty.
He had sensed something of his own nature.
Just as he had realised the George who returned to England in 1855 was not the same man who had left it two years before.
If he were only a little braver, if only he dared look a little deeper, he would surely understand why Edward had shot himself the day after his honeymoon.
The answer, long denied, was waiting for him too. And still, always, just out of reach.
Mrs. Clark’s hand came down on top of his, cool and ghost-light. “I’m sorry to bring this to you. I did not know where else to go.”
“No, I should be the one who’s sorry. I am. For my brother.” And for myself. He took a breath. His lungs hurt as though he had been drowning. “And of course you were right to come here. I will think of something.”
“I’m not your responsibility, Mr. Mandeville,” she said, tightly.
“No.” He spoke to the hand upon his own. “You’re my friend.”
At last, something in her seemed to give way, and she nodded. “Very well. And thank you.”
It was, frankly, something of a relief for Thomas to be able to think only of practical matters.
Things that could be done. It was an illusion, of course, but it was enough to temporarily quell his inner tumult.
“One thing at a time. I must find you somewhere to stay for tonight, and we can consider the future tomorrow.”
Micha spoke sharply from the edges of the room. “You’re protecting the reputation of a whore?”
“Micha,” Thomas gasped. “That is unnecessary.”
Mrs. Clark, however, did not react. “I am a whore. The word does not frighten me.”
Thomas made a convulsive, awkward “There’s a child present” gesture, and Hope glared at him. “I am not afraid of words either.” She jerked up her chin. “A whore means a person who does something for money. A bastard is a child without a father.”
And I, thought Thomas with a deep and terrible clarity that brought with it a strange sort of freedom, am a sodomite. What a party they made.
“What you were, or how you have lived, is not important,” said Thomas. “Do you both feel ready to brave the storm? Let me get an umbrella.”
He would take them to Esther. For all the sharpness of her tongue, he could not imagine her turning them away.
He even half-hoped she might welcome them, unorthodox though the whole situation was.
Despite the gravity of Mrs. Clark’s circumstances, Thomas could almost have smiled at his own.
For a man who lived the quietest of lives, he seemed to have discovered a talent for finding the unlikely and extraordinary.
“They’ll think she’s your mistress.” Micha came after him, sullen as the rain-sodden earth. “They’ll say the girl’s yours.”
“I would hope they know me better than that.”
“How can you be so fucking naive? You can’t just show up with some strange woman and a fatherless brat and expect people to accept it.”
“Why?” asked Thomas.
“What do you mean ‘why’?”
“These are kind people, Micha. Do you have no faith in simple goodness?”
“No.” Micha curled his lip. “And neither would you if you had any sense.”
Thomas reached out to him, but Micha knocked his hand away and went back to the window, where he stood, staring out at the night. “You’ll never choose me, will you?”
“I have chosen you.”
But Micha just shook his head. “You choose goodness every time. No matter what I offer. Even if I beg.”
“Why do you place yourself in opposition to what is right?”
“Because that’s what the world does to people like me.”
“People like us,” Thomas reminded him gently.
“We’re not alike.”
The words were a wall. Unbreachable. The Micha who had opened himself, surrendered himself, there with Thomas in the firelight seemed suddenly a dream.
An impossibility. A moment too fragile to survive beyond its instant.
Thomas didn’t know what to do, what to say, how to make Micha his lover again.
And Mrs. Clark and her daughter were waiting for him.
“I’ll be back soon,” Thomas tried, half-pleading with Micha’s rigid back.
But Micha only shrugged.
In the hallway, Mrs. Clark was helping Hope back into her travelling cloak.
“Are we having another adventure?” asked the girl.
“Only a very small one.” Thomas buttoned his overcoat all the way to his chin.
“There is no such thing as a small adventure. If there was, it would not be an adventure.”
“Then, I suppose,” he agreed, “we are having an adventure.”
He shoved the door into the face of the wind, stepped into the storm, and tried to put up the umbrella. Within seconds, it was inside out.
“Not one of my better ideas.” He dropped it onto the doorstep.
Hope came up beside him and, to his surprise, slipped her hand into his. “We cannot all be men of genius.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
And then, almost lost to the weather, came a soft, shy laugh.