Chapter Five #2
He was about thirty years old, a man of dark hair, medium height, and somewhat stocky build. Charlotte once mentioned that she thought him nearsighted, but he had yet to drive a carriage into a lamppost.
Livia squeezed past him. It wouldn’t do for her to remain outside the door—she would be that much more easily seen in the light spilling out. “I need my letter back, Mott. You still have it?”
A nonplussed Mott closed the door. “Yes, miss. I’ll fetch it.”
He climbed up to the loft that served as his lodging, the ladder squeaking with his every step.
The place smelled of leather polish, wheel grease, and ammonia.
Livia looked around. She hadn’t been in here since shortly after Charlotte ran away, to ask for Mott’s help in getting her letters to Charlotte and vice versa.
It was as tidy as she remembered. A town coach—hired for the Season—occupied one side.
The other side was taken up by four stalls, but only two were occupied, a pair of fidgety bays that were also hired for the Season.
Stirrups and coils of ropes hung from large wooden pegs; an array of brushes, scrapers, and homemade pastes lined an uneven-looking shelf.
Mott came back down the ladder, her letter clasped between his lips.
“Thank you,” she said, when he handed her the letter. And then, without much hope, she added, “Have you spoken to my father about staying on with us?”
Mott, like the carriage and the horses, was hired only for the Season: Appearances must be maintained, and someone had to drive Lady Holmes and her daughters about town. At home in the country, they shared a gardener-groom with their nearest neighbor and drove themselves.
Normally Livia did not inquire into prospects of continued employment for members of the staff. Her parents were not easy or kind and she had become inured to the coming and going of servants. But Mott had been truly helpful this summer.
And he didn’t seem to dislike her, which made him rather extraordinary in her eyes, since most people didn’t care for her particular kind of high-strung self-consciousness.
Still, it had been an act of desperation on her part, asking him to speak with Sir Henry about his chances of remaining with the Holmeses beyond the Season.
But he was now her only ally and she didn’t want to rusticate in the country for nine months without a single person she could count on.
“He ain’t been in a proper mood lately,” said Mott.
Livia couldn’t disagree with that assessment.
One would think her father would be thrilled to be cleared of all suspicions with regard to the death of his erstwhile fiancée, with whom he had been heard to argue in the hours shortly before her sudden demise.
And to learn that it was his good fortune to have been jilted by Lady Amelia Drummond after all, as the Sackville affair had shown her ladyship to have been of singularly questionable character and judgment.
But no, Sir Henry had been furious instead.
According to Charlotte, he felt outraged that a woman of such inferior moral fiber had rejected him. And he was further incensed that as she was already six feet underground, he couldn’t possibly berate her as she deserved.
As a result, there had not been an opportune moment for Mott to approach Sir Henry.
Nor was he very likely to find one before the end of the Season.
“Well, don’t give up hope,” said Livia, more for her own benefit than his.
Mott opened the door for her. “I shan’t, Miss Livia.”
Lord Ingram met his wife on the stairs—he was headed up to the nursery to say good night to his children, and she had just come from there.
“My lady,” he said, keeping his voice free of inflections.
She nodded coolly. “My lord.”
Over the years they had come to a domestic arrangement that enabled them to spend as much time apart as possible, while still ostensibly living as man and wife.
They took their meals separately, simple enough when she had her morning cocoa in bed and he availed himself of luncheons at his clubs.
And during the Season it was particularly easy to avoid each other at dinner: Whether they dined out or hosted dinner parties at home, it was Society’s unspoken rule that such occasions were not for chitchat between husband and wife, but socializing with others.
With regard to the children, too, they had come to an unspoken agreement: He breakfasted with them on weekdays and took them out Sunday afternoons; she lunched with them on weekdays and had the nursery to herself Sunday evenings.
She would have tucked the children in bed just now—had she managed the feat five minutes sooner, as she usually did, they would not have run into each other.
Come to think of it, she had also been late coming back home this afternoon.
He didn’t mind spending more time with his children, but it was uncharacteristic of her to be less than punctual.
She descended past him, her steps impatient.
“Did you use the typewriter in the study, by the way?”
He did not say my typewriter or my study. But she must have heard something to that effect. She turned around. “Would you like me not to, in the future?”
“You are at perfect liberty to avail yourself of anything in this house. I was only curious—you do not ordinarily require a typewriter.”
“Sometimes I wish for my correspondence to be typewritten,” she said, her tone civil but distant.
He wasn’t sure what had led him to ask the question in the first place.
Something about his wife felt different of late.
Charlotte Holmes would be able to tell him exactly what constituted that disparity; he, not blessed with Sherlockian faculties of observation, had to rely on his gut, which didn’t tell him how or why, but only that he should pay attention.
Was it possible she was having an affair? He had yet to betray his marriage vows; he didn’t think she had either. Not to mention that for a while now, he’d had the impression that romantic entanglement was the last thing she was after.
But did it behoove him to be more watchful, in case she gave him grounds for divorce? Would he actually put those grounds to use? Was he hardened enough to tear his children from their mother, who, despite her flaws as a wife, had always been a caring parent?
And if he was never going to divorce her, what would he gain by finding out whether she might be having an affair?
“I wish you a good evening, Lady Ingram,” he said.
Charlotte walked into her room, shut the door, and leaned back against it, a hand over her face.
It had been a long, strange day, from Lord Bancroft’s proposal to Mr. Finch’s nondisappearance. And to think, only a little more than twenty-four hours ago, she had kissed Lord Ingram. Very briefly, to be sure, but the first time in more than a decade, a moment of stark, all-engrossing heat.
Events were easy to deal with. Emotional responses, less so. They were not crisp or factual. They mutated at will. They expanded to fill all available space in one’s consciousness and left no room for anything else.