Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
When Mark finished moving the boxes for the dispensary secretary, he bid her goodbye and told her to pass along his farewell to the doctor, who was busy in her examining room. He strolled back to New Oxford Street, hailed a cab, and went to his parents-in-law’s home.
Mr. Hanson wasn’t home, and Mark hadn’t expected him to be. Mr. Hanson was a gentleman who’d made his fortune in the city, and then wanted his daughter to marry up into aristocracy. The man, despite his gentle origins, stayed heavily involved in his businesses.
Mrs. Hanson, however, was at home. And surprised to see him.
“Ellen visited me this morning,” he told her cheerfully, “and we’ve decided to open our home again. She’s moving in with me today.”
Mrs. Hanson blinked. “Are you certain?”
“Completely.” Mark grinned. “It’s high time we started acting like husband and wife, do you not agree?
” He imagined cozying up to her in the evening, reading and listening to the fire crackle and pop, and his heart panged.
Ellen, in the same room with him. It was such a comforting thought it nearly hurt.
She opened and closed her mouth several times. “Well, yes, I suppose so, but I thought...you haven’t exactly been very demonstrative of the bond of marriage.”
Mark’s smile slipped. “I admit that.” Why on earth did you let your daughter marry me? Isn’t it a parent’s job to protect their children? “She’s graciously decided to give me another chance.” Oh, if only that were true.
“Good for you,” Mrs. Hanson said faintly. She was clearly not convinced, but she couldn’t exactly forbid Mark from living with his wife. She went to the door of the drawing room and opened it.
“Madam?” A footman immediately appeared.
“Tell one of the maids to pack my daughter’s things, and when they’re ready send them over to her new home.”
Mark offered the address to the footman. He stood, bowing to his mother-in-law. “Thank you for your time.”
“Oh, Mr. Glenfall, I may know what has precipitated my daughter’s sudden change of heart,” she burst out.
Mark paused, halfway to the door, and kept a pleasant expression on his face. “Oh?”
She wrung her hands together, even as her voice remained calm.
“Ellen was laid low with grief after...the baby. She developed some noble yet inappropriate hobbies in a way to process her grief. She has a good heart, and I admire her charitable spirit, but she does tend to take things too far. My husband and I allowed her freedom we wouldn’t otherwise give, because of the circumstances.
What I mean to say is, she may need someone to show her how to moderate her hobbies and restrict them to normal acts of charity, like knitting blankets for hospitals. I want you to be forewarned.”
A wave of fury swept over Mark, sudden and unexpected. “As I understand it, she regularly corresponds with the world’s leading experts on infant mortality—”
“Yes, I’ve talked to her about not interrupting physicians doing their work— ”
“—and implements their research on premature birth here in London. By herself. With no financial or medical support. Not even a single incubator to help her—”
Mrs. Hanson frowned at the use of the unfamiliar word.
“—and so is London’s best hope of saving weak infants from death.” Mark sucked in a deep breath. “I have no intention of restricting her acts of charity.” He gave a short, abrupt bow and walked out the door. Does she not know her daughter at all?
He walked home, anger and disgust churning within him. As he passed one block and hurried down the next, Mark realized his anger wasn’t completely directed at Ellen’s mother. How do I not know my wife at all? She must’ve been this intelligent and passionate all along. How did I miss it?
Mark thought about how immature and silly Ellen had been at eighteen, when they first met, and then how, honestly, he’d been worse at twenty.
By the time she was twenty-one, she'd lost her baby—our baby, he corrected, even though it still felt abstract—and was working hard to save other women from similar fates. At that same time, he was twenty-two, hadn’t been promoted to an officer yet, and was still obsessed with conjugating Greek verbs correctly.
She had a talent and passion that couldn’t be ignored.
Mark had no desire to repeat the mistake her parents were making.
He’d much rather focus on her than making an heir now anyway.
And clearly the last thing she wanted was a relationship with the man who left her three months after the marriage and didn’t even visit after she lost her baby. Our baby, he corrected again.
When Mark arrived home, he let the staff know to prepare the mistress’s bedchambers, then sequestered himself in the small library.
He'd commissioned some bookcases built into the walls, but they weren’t done yet, so most of his books teetered in towers and piles in all corners of the room.
Two hours later, Mrs. Gaye, the elderly housekeeper, knocked on the door to let him know a footman from the Hansons’ home had arrived, three trunks in tow.
“Perfect. Have Mrs. Glenfall’s maid unpack it all.”
The elderly woman stared at him.
Mark closed the textbook he'd been skimming, then set it down on his desk. “Is there a problem?”
“I don’t think she has a lady’s maid. At least, none came with the trunks.” Her creaky voice barely rose above a whisper.
He sighed, adjusting his wire-rimmed reading spectacles. He hadn’t expected that. Did Ellen’s frugality extend to not employing a maid? “I suppose that’s something we’ll need to discuss with Mrs. Glenfall,” Mark said. “Can you unpack her things?”
Mrs. Gaye nodded, but Mark wasn’t convinced. She and her husband had gotten on nicely when it had been an empty house, but now it might be too much for the couple.
“I’ll come check on it later,” he said.
After a late lunch, Mark tucked his book in a drawer and his spectacles in his pocket, then went upstairs and down the hall to the mistress’s rooms. He walked into the bedroom and stopped, a flurry of emotions and memories hitting him at once.
His wedding night had been in this room, as had much of the joy and delight that his short married bliss afforded him.
It was also where a tearful Ellen had demanded to understand why he’d joined the Navy without warning her.
It was not, at least, where Constance had been born and died. At least he could give that to Ellen.
He glanced into the large, walk-in closet.
Dresses of all colors hung on racks. Mostly made of wools, coarse linens, cotton, and some twill, they all appeared distinctly middle-class.
Few were made of silk, fine linen, or velvet, or had elaborate bustles and pleats.
In the back he spied a few pink dresses, all ones he vaguely recognized from during their courtship and engagement.
They’d been pretty, paired with her rosy cheeks and light brown curls. Did she like the color anymore?
On the dresser, Mrs. Gaye had laid the silver hairbrush, comb, and handheld mirror. He assumed the drawers held further parts of a woman’s toilette.
Blue drawings of shepherd boys and dairy maids pranced across the wallpaper, and the curtains followed the color scheme with robin’s egg blue and gold tassels on the edges.
The bed—he remembered that bed all too well, for it had featured prominently on nights on the Black Prince when he’d been too tired or lonely to remember why he’d left—sat proudly in the room, with the empty trunks beside it, the bedspread a damask pattern echoing the wallpaper’s pastoral scenes.
Something on the nightstand caught his eye.
He walked over, ignoring Mrs. Gaye’s murmured question, and picked up a photograph lying on the marble top.
It was of a baby, eyes open yet unseeing, swaddled in a soft blue blanket and resting in a cradle.
His hand holding the photograph shook. Although the photograph itself was black and white, an artist had painted the color back into it, adding a sense of life to the lifeless display.
Constance.
She was small, but then all newborns were small, and her light brown hair had been brushed away to show her tiny forehead. Mark’s hand trembled so much he dropped the photo back on the table.
“The little miss,” Mrs. Gaye said sadly, drawing up behind him. “I set it there for Mrs. Glenfall to see when she wakes each morning.”
Mark startled at her approach. “You saw Constance?” He pushed the words out of his closed-up throat.
She shook her head. “No, Mrs. Glenfall left the house a week before the birth, to go live with her parents again. But we heard the news, of course, and I’d heard her parents paid a photographer to visit before the funeral."
My daughter. He formed the words in his mind.
It still felt unreal. He glanced at the table and noticed a thin, fine curl of hair tied on both ends with baby blue thread.
Mark picked it up before thinking maybe this was too personal, too invasive of Ellen’s keepsakes to explore.
He ran the pad of his forefinger along the gentle curl and felt the wispy hairs, only an inch or so long.
Hair that should’ve been warm and smelling as fresh as a baby’s head.
He had no idea what a baby’s head smelled like, only that his mother and his nanny used to talk about them and sniff the twins’ heads when they were little.
Suddenly he wished he knew that smell, so he’d know what he was missing now.
“Do you need anything else, sir?” Mrs. Gaye cut into his thoughts.
Mark set the curl back down. “Where is the frame?” H is voice came out hoarse.
“Sir?”
“The frame for the photograph. Why is it left out unprotected?” He swallowed the knot in his throat.
“The hair and the photo were wrapped in a scrap of fabric. Probably a baby quilt. I set it out as a comfort. Do you think Mrs. Glenfall will be offended?”