Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CASSANDRA
The last of their trunks had been placed on the carriage. They were leaving Greywick. Two months had passed since the child had been born and buried.
Cassandra passed through the front doorway and came to the stone steps.
She took in a deep breath as she surveyed the moor one final time.
The bleached rocks on the ridge above the house.
The grasses buffeted in the unforgiving wind.
The twisted Scot pines, and the ruins of the old Roman walls, were all almost monochromatic even under the sun’s weak rays.
She’d grown to like the severity of it all.
The wind gusted, and she pulled her wool cloak closer together over her chest. The icy-damp cold and the constant draughts in the house, however, were not something she would miss.
Her body had healed, but her heart and soul remained torn.
Tidesfar would be brighter, warmer, and that was something to look forward to.
Rowen gestured the footman away and held his hand out to his wife. She offered him a relaxed smile, which she knew he would appreciate. Placing her gloved hand in his, she mounted the steps into the Oakley coach.
He could not feel the loss as she did, in her body, but she sensed it in him; in the way his jaw set harder now, in the way pitilessness had become his armour.
In the aftermath, he hadn’t taken off to a mens’ club or to the dinners they’d been invited to, nor taken any trips.
He’d been at Greywick the entire time. With her.
Sometimes at a distance, but here. Amiable discussions over a meal or tea.
A drink in the evening. A walk on the grounds. Always steady and calm.
Neither of them cared to fill the quiet with pointless conversation, and they began to easily share silences.
It was as if everything of society had been stripped away by the experience and the remote melancholy of Greywick.
Perhaps it would have been different if they were in London or at Tidesfar, but here, here in this dark house and on this stark land buffeted by such intense wind, quiet seemed exceptional and precious.
And then he’d gotten her a gift. Jewels? Expensive trifles? She’d eagerly torn at the paper. A pile of poetry books.
“Oh, Rowen!”
“I had them sent from Edinburgh. All the new ones, the ones everyone’s talking about.”
She’d sifted through the leather volumes, which included Cowper and Charlotte Smith, and a rising artist-poet named William Blake. “You’ll have to read them too, so we can discuss them together.”
“They might be a touch too progressive for my well-polished classical sensibility,” he remarked, his tone derisive.
She laughed. “They might. But you must prepare, Your Grace. I fear the days of Pope may be waning.” She’d shown him one of the books.
“Especially this Blake fellow. Aunt Isobel had mentioned his work to me. He’s barely been published and is already causing a stir.
His work sounds rife with boldness and chaos. ”
“Look at you, all eagerness at the thought.”
“You might very well regret this, Oakley.”
Only a rueful smile broke over his lips.
“Thank you.” She’d planted a kiss on his cheek and gave him a hug, enjoying the scent of leather and tobacco on his warm skin.
Last night, saying goodbye to Aunt Isobel, Uncle Winslow, and Edmund had been surprisingly difficult for her.
She had clung to Aunt Isobel, embraced Uncle Winslow and Edmund, and she had the feeling that Rowen, too, was moved in having to part with them.
He had once remarked that he had never spent so much time with them and had particularly enjoyed himself.
Cassandra stole one final look at the house. Ravens swooped over the old pele tower. The coach swayed as they made their way down the long drive and finally onto the main road. Rowen stretched his legs as he peered out the window, the moor rolling past. It would be a long trip.
Weeks later, when her thoughts drifted, her mind still searched for some missed sign, some moment that might have warned her. But that road led only inward, toward an abyss she refused to inhabit.
Although the pains of her body had faded, there remained another deeper, sharper one.
She would never carry another child within her, would never be given another chance.
Cruel, cruel Nature, she thought. But she refused to fall to her knees to that devastation.
If her body would not carry life, then she would make her life full.
Aunt Isobel had never been able to have a child, but she and Uncle Winslow had built a rich life together nonetheless, and they’d had Edmund to love as their own.
She glanced at the Duke, his sharp jaw flexed as he took in the stone-strewn land the horses charged past.
The world awaiting her at Tidesfar would be grand, complicated, and demanding. It was a world she had never been trained for, but she did not shrink from the thought. She had survived worse.
Cassandra folded her hands in her lap. She would stand at her husband’s side. She would learn. And in time, she would shape this new world to fit her.