CHAPTER 58 #2
Elizabeth thought of Mrs. Marwood in her old shawl, counting household keys; Mrs. Marwood with spectacles in her hand and a crumb on her sleeve; Mrs. Marwood, one week before she died, pronouncing a pudding excessive and then eating all of it.
“She would have objected to grand,” Elizabeth said. “She preferred useful, clean, punctual, and not foolish before breakfast.”
Kitty looked impressed, though not tempted.
Mrs. Albright appeared then in the doorway with two folded cloths over her arm. She took in the room, the girls, the open desk, and Elizabeth in Mrs. Marwood’s chair without any change of expression, which in Mrs. Albright was almost excess emotion.
“I beg your pardon, madam. I thought you might require these if the covers were to be taken off.”
Elizabeth looked at her. “You knew she had kept this?”
Mrs. Albright’s eyes went to the card box.
“Yes, madam.”
Kitty leaned a little toward Georgiana and whispered, “What is it?”
“A beetle box,” Elizabeth said.
Kitty blinked, accepted that this was one of the ordinary mysteries of Portman Square, and said nothing.
Mrs. Albright placed the cloths upon a side table. “Mrs. Marwood kept several of Miss Elizabeth’s early treasures.”
“Treasures is generous,” Elizabeth said.
“Mrs. Marwood used another word, madam.”
Elizabeth looked up. “Did she?”
“Yes, madam. Evidence.”
The word was so exactly Mrs. Marwood that Elizabeth had to close her eyes for a moment.
Georgiana looked from the box to Elizabeth. “Evidence of what?”
Mrs. Albright did not answer at once. Elizabeth opened her eyes and saw, for the first time, that the housekeeper’s composure had tenderness beneath it, though it was held very strictly.
“Evidence,” Mrs. Albright said, “that Miss Elizabeth had been here, miss.”
The room became very still.
Elizabeth felt something in her chest move painfully, not like a wound reopening, but like a knot giving way.
Mrs. Doddridge, who had evidently come in search of the young ladies and found more feeling than she had intended to interrupt, appeared behind Mrs. Albright and stopped. Her gaze moved from the desk to Elizabeth’s face.
“Mrs. Marwood was not tender in the common style,” she said.
“No,” Elizabeth replied.
“But she was permanent.”
Elizabeth looked down at her hands. “Yes.”
Mrs. Albright moved a little farther into the room, perhaps because some truths, once begun, had to be set down properly.
“She had the nursery bell taken down after Miss Elizabeth’s first month.”
Elizabeth looked at her sharply. “What nursery bell?”
“The one beside your bed, madam. You rang it very often at first.”
“I do not remember that.”
“No, madam.”
Kitty’s face had grown troubled. “Were you ill?”
Elizabeth did not answer. She looked at Mrs. Albright.
“No, miss,” the housekeeper said. “She wished to know whether she was wanted.”
Georgiana lowered her eyes.
Elizabeth sat very still.
“And Mrs. Marwood had it taken down?” Georgiana asked quietly.
“Yes, miss. She said the house was not to teach a child to ask that question by bell.”
The silence that followed was not uncomfortable. It was too full for comfort.
Kitty came a step nearer Elizabeth’s chair. She did not speak, which was perhaps the greatest service she could have offered.
At length Georgiana placed her drawing paper on the edge of the desk.
“May I see the box?” she asked.
Elizabeth gave it to her.
Georgiana held it with both hands, as if it were more delicate than it was. Kitty leaned close, careful not to touch.
“It is very small,” Kitty said.
“I was very small.”
“Were you frightened when you came here?”
The question was Kitty’s, but Georgiana’s stillness deepened around it.
Elizabeth looked at the two girls before her: one sister not close enough to have shared the old fear, one frightened guest only beginning to discover that a house might answer fear by staying steady.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “For a while.”
Kitty’s mouth trembled a little. “I do not remember that.”
“No. You were younger still. And I was not there for you to remember very often.”
That hurt to say, but not as sharply as Elizabeth had expected. It was simply true.
“I remember you coming back sometimes,” Kitty said. “With Mrs. Marwood. You had better gloves than we did.”
“I am sure Mrs. Marwood considered that essential.”
“And you did not always know our games.”
“No.”
Kitty looked down at the beetle box in Georgiana’s hands. “I used to think you were too grand for them.”
“I was often too proud,” Elizabeth said. “It is not quite the same thing, but it looks very similar in a bonnet.”
Kitty smiled faintly, then sobered. “I did not know you had been afraid.”
Elizabeth reached for her hand.
Kitty gave it at once.
“No,” Elizabeth said. “Nor did I know what you missed of me. That is how families lose things, I think. Not always by cruelty. Sometimes by distance, and by everyone supposing the other person understands.”
Georgiana looked up then, and something in her face said she had understood more than the words.
Mrs. Doddridge crossed to the side table and lifted one of the cloths.
“Shall we take off the covers, madam?”
Elizabeth looked around the room once more: at the chair, the desk, the careful covers, the life halted in obedience to a death many months old.
“Yes,” she said. “All of them.”
Mrs. Albright moved to the window.
“And the curtains?”
Elizabeth looked at the pale line of light waiting at the fabric’s edge.
“All of them.”
Mrs. Albright’s hands paused only briefly. Then she drew the curtains wide.
The afternoon light entered at once, pale and unceremonious. It found dust in the air, the edge of the desk, the little beetle box in Georgiana’s hands, Kitty’s ribbon, and Elizabeth’s fingers still holding her sister’s.
Nothing broke.
Elizabeth had half expected something would.
“May we sit here?” Georgiana asked after a time.
Elizabeth looked at her.
“I mean—not now, if you would rather not. Only the light is good. For drawing.”
Kitty nodded eagerly, then remembered herself and tried to turn the nod into an expression of respectful neutrality.
Elizabeth looked toward Mrs. Albright.
Mrs. Albright said, “The chairs will want brushing first, madam.”
It was the housekeeper’s version of consent.
“Then let them be brushed,” Elizabeth said. “And have a fire laid tomorrow morning. Not too large a one.”
Mrs. Albright inclined her head.
“Mrs. Marwood disliked waste,” Elizabeth added, because the room seemed to require the explanation.
“She did, madam.”
Kitty looked relieved, as if the dead lady’s opinion had been consulted and found manageable.
It was some time before Elizabeth left the room. She did not close the curtains when she went.
Fitzwilliam came home before dinner.
Elizabeth heard him in the hall: the lower note of his voice, Mrs. Albright’s reply, the step which had become known to her not by sound alone but by the change it made in her own attention.
She was in the passage near Mrs. Marwood’s rooms, the key still in her hand, though she had meant to return it to the cabinet half an hour before.
He came up the stairs and stopped when he saw her.
“Elizabeth?”
“I am quite well.”
His expression did not alter into disbelief, which was one of the comforts of being married to a man who had learned that quite well often meant only that a person had not yet fallen down.
He came nearer.
She looked at the key in her hand. “Mrs. Albright reminded me that the rooms wanted airing.”
“Mrs. Marwood’s rooms?”
“Yes.”
His gaze moved to the half-open door, then back to her face. “Was it hard?”
Elizabeth tried to answer properly. No came first, because it had not been hard in any clean way. Yes came after, because nothing about it had been easy.
“It was strange,” she said at last. “And less strange than it ought to have been.”
Fitzwilliam waited.
“She died last summer,” Elizabeth said. “I have not been to the grave since the funeral.”
“I did not know.”
“I had been very busy deciding that later was soon enough.”
He accepted that. He had always been good at accepting what was true before asking what ought to be done with it.
“Will you go to her?” he asked.
Elizabeth looked up. “To the grave?”
“Yes.”
She had thought of it many times, always in passing, always as something she would decide later. Later had proved obliging for many months. Now it stood in the corridor with her husband and a key in her hand.
“I suppose I should.”
“May I take you?”
The simplicity of it nearly undid her.
She looked toward the stairs, below which Georgiana sat somewhere safe, and Kitty made safety noisy enough not to feel like punishment.
“Georgiana—”
“Will be safer here than anywhere else in London,” Fitzwilliam said. “Mrs. Doddridge, Mrs. Albright, Kitty, the servants, and the men watching the square make a stronger guard than she would have if we took her out.”
Elizabeth drew a breath. “And Lord Pomington?”
“I relied upon him too much to name him lightly.”
It was gently said, not offered as wit to turn her aside, but as a small bridge back to breathing.
Elizabeth let herself cross it.
“Tomorrow morning, then?”
“If you wish it.”
She looked down at the key again. “Yes. I think I do.”
Fitzwilliam’s hand came to hers, not taking the key, not taking command, only covering her fingers for a moment.
“Then I will arrange it.”
She let him.
The next morning was mild, with a softness in the air that belonged to late spring and was therefore not to be trusted.
London had washed itself clean enough overnight to appear innocent.
The carriage was brought round without bustle.
Mrs. Doddridge and Mrs. Albright were told the destination.
Georgiana and Kitty were left with drawing materials, warm chocolate, and strict instructions that no one was to improve upon Lord Pomington by adding wings unless the dog gave written permission.
Elizabeth wore a plain dark pelisse and gloves. Evans arranged her bonnet with unusual care and no questions.
They stopped for flowers on the way.