Chapter 10 #2
Thea considered how to answer. ‘There were some rumours, but nothing specific.’ That wasn’t quite true, but neither was she sure how accurate her sister Tabitha’s information had been.
‘We were too bold – or at least I was. Emma was cautious to a fault but there was just the one time that she allowed it to happen outside of a secret and meticulously planned two-o’clock-in-the-morning tryst.’
Thea’s heart bled for her friend. ‘And you were found?’
‘In the most compromising position you can imagine,’ agreed Harriet. ‘I have heard the rumours, and they were mostly true. It’s hard to deny it when another woman’s face is… well, nowhere it should be in polite society.’
‘I imagine it is.’ Thea could only imagine the reaction of their families. ‘And what about now? With Emma I mean.’
Harriet shrugged. ‘We mostly manage. It hasn’t gone between us – I can tell that, but you know Emma. She will be who she is supposed to be in society despite any personal cost – to herself or anyone else.’
Thea nodded. She did know that. Always proper. She leaned forward and put a hand on Harriet’s arm. ‘Something good will come for you.’ She expected Harriet to be downcast, but she only laughed.
‘Thea, something good already has! I am a jilted wife at twenty-nine. No man will touch me and that is jolly excellent. I have an independent living and am quite able to enjoy myself unencumbered by a husband. There are worse ways to live as a woman in London.’
Thea smiled. ‘Well, if you put it like that.’ She leaned her elbow on the back of the seat and cupped her chin in her hand. ‘It would be nice for you to meet someone though.’
‘All in good time,’ said Harriet, back to her jolly self and waving around the glass of port in a way that made Thea fear for the upholstery.
‘But now, I did not bring you here to talk about myself. I have shared my woes, and we now understand one another better, I think?’ Thea nodded and swallowed nervously.
She thought she knew what was coming. ‘So now, I want to hear your story.’
Thea hesitated. This was hard. Saying it out loud was scary. ‘My story?’ she asked, just to buy herself some time.
Harriet tutted at her. ‘Don’t be coy, Thea.
I know you. Husbands make one angry and frustrated and miserable.
They do not make one this heartbroken.’ She waved an arm upwards and downwards in Thea’s direction as if indicating all of her.
Thea automatically took a breath to deny it, but Harriet held up a hand.
‘Don’t tell me you’re not. I have experience, Thea, remember. ’
Thea swallowed and knew she had to share, but where should she begin? A little smile appeared, when she thought about how surprised Harriet would be when she learned about Martha. But Harriet was too impatient.
‘I think,’ she said, holding one index finger in the air. It waved around a bit. ‘That you kissed Speckle’s gardener.’ Her characteristic boldness was returning now she had shared a secret that obviously weighed on her.
‘Herbert’s gardener,’ corrected Thea.
‘You did kiss her,’ announced Harriet, arms in the air triumphantly. ‘I knew it. Nobody is that sad when a gardener leaves.’
‘She was a good gardener,’ said Thea, still struggling despite how relaxed Harriet seemed about this whole thing. And the port.
‘And a good kisser?’
Thea hesitated and couldn’t stop a little giggle escaping.
‘You definitely kissed her!’
Thea held up her thumb and forefinger, so they were a small distance apart. At least she thought they were, she couldn’t focus very well. ‘Only a tiny bit.’
Harriet snorted. ‘How do you kiss someone a tiny bit?’
‘Easy,’ said Thea. ‘You kiss them a tiny bit, and then you stop because it was… unsatisfactory.’
‘And why was it unsatisfactory?’ asked Harriet, leaning forward and narrowing her eyes.
‘Because there is nothing between you, I suppose,’ said Thea, who had thought about this a lot in recent weeks.
‘And?’ Harriet sat forward and fixed her with a stare.
Thea slumped against the back of the sofa. She knew when she was beaten. ‘And because they are not the woman you want to kiss.’ She looked up at Harriet, knowing she would understand.
‘Aha!’ announced Harriet, delighted. She placed her port on the table and clasped her hands in front of her. ‘I knew your heart was broken. So, who was it?’ A beat of silence went by. ‘Good god it isn’t me, is it?’ she asked, suddenly serious.
Thea giggled. ‘Sorry, but no.’
Harriet lifted an eyebrow, evidently relieved. ‘Someone I know?’ she guessed.
Thea nodded.
‘Not Emma?’ asked Harriet, her face falling.
Thea was horrified at the thought. ‘Absolutely not.’
Harriet’s brow creased a little. ‘Then who?’
Thea couldn’t keep it in any longer. ‘Lady Foxmore,’ she said, a small smile playing on her lips. She was proud of her relationship with Martha, despite its current status.
Harriet’s mouth dropped open. ‘Not?’
‘Yes.’
‘As in?’
‘Martha Smilgrove, of Foxmore Square and Denbury,’ said Thea as Harriet’s eyes bulged and her mouth did not shut. She blinked a few times.
‘I can see that,’ she said eventually. ‘She is a handsome and impressive woman. An unrequited love for her would be hard.’
‘Not unrequited,’ clarified Thea.
Harriet blinked again. ‘Lady Foxmore told you she liked you?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘For more than your weird, dried fish?’
Thea found she was quite enjoying herself. ‘Oh, far more than that.’ She drew her knees up in front of herself and grasped them with her arms. ‘She took me away to Scarborough and it all came out, and then we were together – in secret of course – for almost a year.’
She scanned Harriet’s face. It was unmoving save for a slight flicker of the eyes.
She assumed there was activity happening inside.
Probably Harriet trying not to picture it, she suspected.
She wondered how much worse she could make it for her friend.
‘We were quite the pairing.’ She sighed, staring at the blue curtains flanking the tall window.
‘Lady Foxmore does like to excel at all endeavours in which she participates, as I think you know.’
Harriet made a sort of strangled sound. Thea reached to the table and retrieved her glass of port. ‘Will this help?’
Harriet took it and downed it all in one. That seemed to do the trick.
‘The Countess of Foxmore? The most upright, proper and most terrifying lady of society?’
Thea grinned. ‘The very same.’
‘And you…’ Harriet tried to gather herself.
‘I am sorry, Thea, but I do need to be very sure we are of the same understanding. Are you telling me that you were together, in that you did bedroom things together? You are not misunderstanding me and saying that you simply did nerdy things with plants?’
‘We were in love,’ Thea clarified. ‘And lust. Very much so.’
A little clarity seemed to return to Harriet’s eyes. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That makes sense.’
‘Does it?’ asked Thea. Perhaps Harriet was more worldly than she had been, but until the night that Martha had confessed her feelings – the one that Thea thought about often – she would have never guessed that Martha shared her inclinations.
‘She was the one who found me and Emma.’ Harriet flopped backwards on the seat so that one arm hung over the side, one over the back and she stared at the ceiling.
‘Not... doing the thing?’ A thousand thoughts raced through Thea’s head, but Harriet shook hers against the sofa back.
‘When we ran away. We didn’t know what to do after it happened. It was Fitzwilliam Fairclough who found us and called for his brother, Monty. He was about to alert the whole house when Emma knocked him out with a warming pan.’
Thea blinked. ‘She didn’t?’
‘She did.’
‘And Monty… Emma’s current husband… was there too?’
‘He was the one who suggested we should run – there was a risk Fitzwilliam would wake and come after Emma again. We disguised ourselves, hopped in a stagecoach, and then we had time to think. Emma wanted us to go away together, but I knew she would resent it after a time. She wouldn’t have coped without connection and having to work in a shop or on a farm.
Ugh.’ Harriet let out a groan of frustration.
‘What a decision to have to make in minutes. We knew Monty would be only too happy to have her, despite what he knew, and I knew of Hugh’s inclinations before then. It was the perfect match.’
Thea felt her thoughts trying to catch up. ‘So where did Martha come in?’
‘She assumed we were running away to make a new life and came to dissuade us. She’d obviously been watching us for a while and now I understand why.
She held up the coach like a proper highwaywoman with Mrs Jenkins in tow, shotgun and all.
She knew that we wouldn’t have survived long as two ladies with no experience of work and she was absolutely right. We both have a lot to thank her for.’
‘With a shotgun?’ asked Thea, her mind slipping to inappropriate places.
‘And long boots,’ said Harriet.
Thea swallowed. ‘She was cautious,’ she said, trying to distract herself. ‘She had a bad experience with a girl she loved before me. The weight of it and the expectation became too much.’
‘I see,’ said Harriet thoughtfully. And then she lifted her head from where it lolled on the upholstery and looked Thea straight in the eye.
‘She looked more handsome than I have ever seen a woman look in her cloak and her boots and that dominating air and just got off a galloping horse. I cannot believe you did it with her, Thea.’
Thea snorted, but then imagined Martha done up as a highwaywoman, again. ‘Ugh,’ she now said, in a frustrated groan, and threw herself lower on the sofa, arms akimbo, just as Harriet had done. ‘It was incredible,’ she mumbled at the ceiling.
‘So, what happened?’ Harriet poked her foot. ‘Were you found out like me and Emma?’
Thea shook her head. ‘Not as such, but my family were in debt and Ursula–’ she trailed off and the joy she had felt in talking about Martha dissipated. ‘You understand.’
Harriet did. ‘And so, you married George?’
Thea nodded.
‘And Martha went travelling?’
Thea nodded again.
‘And isn’t yet back? After…’ Harriet counted on her fingers. ‘It must be four years?’
‘Five years, six months and fourteen days,’ said Thea certainly. ‘And…’ she hesitated. Saying it out loud would make it real. ‘She has been back. I found out last month, but she didn’t tell me.’ She sagged backwards into the sofa.
‘Do you know why?’
Thea shook her head, mussing her hair on the upholstery.
‘It might help if I did. I assume she has a more exciting life now, or that she’s disappointed in how I’ve failed at everything, or that,’ she swallowed, as she didn’t even like to think of it.
‘That she has someone else. We were writing, and it was my greatest joy and tiding me over everything difficult, and then the letters just stopped.’
‘And you know for sure that she’s been back?’
Thea nodded, mussing her hair further. ‘The Dowager Hartford saw her. Then I went to her house last month and Mrs Jenkins practically told me to buck up and move on. She’s given me up.’
‘That doesn’t sound like her,’ said Harriet. ‘Even before,’ she wiggled her finger in the air, ‘the thing happened with you, it was clear you adored one another.’
‘I thought we did,’ said Thea, sinking further.
‘I really thought we were strong enough for her to explore the world and me to do what I had to do, and then to come back together. She once told me not to choose a man who diminished me, and look at me.’ She waved a hand up and down herself.
‘Every time there is a chink of hope, it gets squashed. Diminished. I can’t grow and have no scholarly contacts who respect me.
Martha is disappointed in me, and I don’t blame her one bit. ’
‘Not diminished,’ said Harriet firmly. ‘You are restricted but ready.’
Thea snorted. ‘Ready to trail around after my husband for the next forty years.’
Harriet leaned up on her elbow. ‘This is why you have been so in dudgeon.’ Thea nodded. ‘And is why you couldn’t enjoy kissing the gardener?’
Thea nodded again. ‘And to make it worse I had resolved to deal with it by rekindling my curiosity for growing. When we went to Herbert’s three weeks ago, I was going to ask Frankie to come and be my gardener, and now I don’t even have that.
Elton is so bloody useless, and Frankie is absolutely unaccounted for.
I have tried every garden in the city I can think of, but she is nowhere.
And all because someone saw her kissing me. ’
‘But didn’t know it was you?’ asked Harriet.
‘Exactly,’ said Thea. ‘At least I hope not. I was the one who gave her a lift home, and someone saw, but nothing has come to the house implicating me thank goodness. We were both dressed as men, so they must’ve assumed she was up to something fishy with one of the lecture-goers.’
‘It’s complicated, being different, isn’t it,’ said Harriet, a deep furrow in her brow.
‘It’s complicated being a woman,’ said Thea. ‘And we are half of all people. Being a different woman is an absolute fiend of a job.’
‘True.’ Harriet sat back. ‘Emma and I are thwarted by ourselves as much as society, Cecily is married to an absolute louse, Helena couldn’t find happy if it bit her on the backside, and you’re married to a blunderbuss.’
‘He’s smarter than that,’ said Thea, shaking her head. ‘He drinks too much and is an absolute wastrel with money, but he is clear as to his role and mine. And mine is getting more controlled by the month.’
‘Because he is getting more insecure,’ said Harriet. ‘Bastard.’
‘If only he’d run off to America to start a ranch.’ Thea dropped her head sideways and grinned at Harriet. ‘He could even go with Miss Bellegarde, that would suit me fine. I could play the jilted wife.’
‘Nope,’ Harriet stared at the fire. ‘A wife divorced by her husband is disgraced. And do you know how many women have ever been successful in gaining a divorce of their own in Britain?’
‘How many?’ asked Thea, staring back at the ceiling.
‘None,’ said Harriet. ‘Not one. They can be beaten, abused, cheated on, infected, incarcerated and controlled, but they cannot leave.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Thea, her heart sinking. She knew it, but it was different when it was said out loud.
‘I am afraid your only way out of a marriage into the Hartford family is death,’ said Harriet. Thea looked up at her, so Harriet qualified. ‘His, preferably. Definitely not yours.’
‘Harriet!’ That made Thea sit up.
Harriet waved her away. ‘I’m not saying you should do it, I’m just pointing out facts.’
Thea slumped back and sighed. ‘It would be more bearable if only Martha were here.’
Harriet reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘You never know, she might be in touch.’
Thea shook her head again. ‘I can’t spend my life wishing for that, and neither can you. We both have to move on.’
‘We probably do,’ sighed Harriet, sounding like she believed it even less than Thea did.