Chapter Three
“I DO BELIEVE it is beyond saving,” Regina said with a frown as she fingered the stain on one of the tablecloths.
It was wine and perhaps some gravy, too.
As mistress of the house, she was consulted regarding linens no longer fit for use, and the laundress had scrubbed this stain so long the fabric had begun to fray.
“Very good, Miss Weathers.” The maid bobbed a quick curtsy and disappeared with the ruined linen, while Regina opened the ledger on her desk, flipping to the page regarding linen supplies so as to make a note.
Twice a year she replenished cloth goods with an order to a factory in Leeds. She liked to keep the list up to date.
At the sound of footsteps, she looked to the doorway in time to see Timothy enter.
She closed the ledger, returned it to its place in the desk, and faced her brother in anticipation.
He did not often seek her out; therefore, he must want to discuss a topic of great importance.
She felt sure she knew what it was and her stomach tightened in anticipation.
“Are we quite recovered from the ball?” he asked, nodding toward the ledger.
“Nearly so,” Regina said. “We have restocked the larder, cleaned and restored every room, and counted the linens. I shall meet with the steward regarding his thoughts, but I believe we can say, finally, that the party is over.”
The party had actually been over for four days— it had taken that long to set the house back to rights.
Julia had gone to stay with a dear friend on the other side of town, and the younger boys had returned to school, so the house was all but empty.
Regina missed the children, as she always did, but she enjoyed the peace as well.
“Will you take a bit of air with me in the gardens, then?”
As Regina fully realized the intention behind her brother’s seeking her company, she was forced to think back to her most embarrassing display at the ball— not that she had ever forgotten it.
After Timothy had joined her in the hallway that night, quite concerned, she had assured him that all was well— she’d composed herself rather quickly after the storm of emotion had passed— and promised her brother a conference about it when the household had sufficiently recovered from the ball.
Now that their overnight guests were gone and the house had returned to its usual routine, she could not put him off any longer and therefore agreed to the interview with a nod.
“Excellent,” Timothy said. “The garden, then.”
She kept her smile polite as she took his arm— a rather formal offer on his part considering that it was just the two of them— and walked with him out of the house, to the east side, and into a beautiful garden, which their mother had designed decades ago.
Mama had loved gardens the way Timothy loved horses and Regina loved... making things better for the people in her life, she supposed.
After a few minutes, Timothy introduced the topic. “The man at the ball was Lieutenant Rossen Martin, was it not?”
Regina startled and looked at her brother’s profile. By the time Ross had come to Himley, Timothy had married, was the father of two children, and lived in London. Since Regina had never spoken of Ross— ever— to anyone, it was a shock to hear Timothy speak his name. “How do you know that?”
“Between the staff and a few select guests, I uncovered the identity of the spectacled man you had thrown out, but I’m afraid that no one knows more than his name. His uncle owned Valor House, did he not?”
“Yes,” Regina said simply, looking forward again.
Remembering such details of Ross’s life was like pulling slivers from her skin; she could not help but think it would be less painful to keep them there.
She should have realized that other people would know him, or take note of his name at the ball, but after so many years of him being more of phantom of memory than a man she had not considered it.
“And how are you acquainted with him?” Timothy asked.
Regina wished she could say she did not know him— she had convinced herself that she never really had— but it seemed as though the part of her soul that had festered all of these years, the part with the splinters left behind, was eager to be free of the secret she had kept for so long. “I once believed I would marry him.”
Timothy came to a stop and turned to her with wide eyes. She could only meet them for a moment before looking away. “It was a secret engagement,” she said. “We were very young.”
Timothy continued to stare, opened his mouth, closed it, and then led her to a bench beneath a trellis.
It was September and cool enough that they did not need the shade; however, it seemed that he wanted to hear her tale sitting down.
“You have never told me of this.” He sounded hurt by the ignorance, as though they were confidantes who often whispered secrets behind their hands.
In truth, Timothy was eleven years Regina’s senior; they had not grown up together.
In fact, they had not known each other all that well until she’d returned to keep house for him at Crumhall.
They had become quite close since then, but what he knew of Regina’s past was something they did not discuss, and she purposely let alone those parts he knew nothing about.
“I have never told anyone.”
“You must tell me now.” Timothy directed his full attention to her, though she remained standing beside the bench. “The whole of it.”
Regina took a breath for fortitude— it was not an easy story to speak about.
“When I was fourteen, Ross’s uncle invited him to stay the summer at Valor House.
We met on a day I had stormed from the house following an argument with Mama about something I no longer remember.
Ross had decided to explore the ruins. We met by accident, but it felt like fate. ”
Dredging up such memories and speaking them aloud for the first time was disconcerting, and Regina found herself needing to push away rising emotion as she continued to explain: how she and Ross had become secret friends, unrestrained by family or societal expectation.
How they had shared smiles at church, left messages for one another at various places around the countryside.
When Ross returned to school, Regina thought she would never see him again, but he returned for the Christmas holiday and again the next summer. By the end of that second summer, they fancied themselves in love, and when he returned the next summer, they began making plans to marry.
“I was nearly seventeen, and therefore of marriageable age. Ross, however, was only one year older. He had no income other than his allowance, which was at the mercy of his parents, and had only just finished his primary schooling. He was expected to pursue an education studying the law.”
“He would have been unable to marry for years, maybe a decade,” Timothy commented. “He could not support a family until then.”
Regina pinched creases into the skirt of her morning gown and nodded.
“I better understand the reasons for such requirements now, but at that time, it felt vastly unfair. We decided that the rules about a man waiting for marriage until he was established were simply tradition intended to rob us of our happiness and our youth.” She shook her head. “We were so foolish.”
“You were young,” Timothy said, as a good father would. “Smarter than you’d ever been before, and feeling as youth often do— strong and sure of themselves.”
Regina nodded in agreement, appreciating the merciful interpretation. “And believing ourselves wiser than anyone else.”
“And no one knew of this secret engagement?”
Regina shook her head. “Part of the excitement was the very secrecy of it; we had a hidden part of ourselves that no one else knew about. I relished it and felt so grown up to have this special connection. But when we decided to marry, we knew we would have to talk to his parents, and then to Papa. We felt sure we could help them see the wisdom of our choices in one another and gain their support. We were in love, or so we thought, and felt sure that it would conquer all.”
“What happened?” Timothy asked.
“He wrote a letter to his mother and stepfather.” She went quiet, feeling the emotions of that time— the waves of anticipation and then the regret and fear and sorrow.
She explained how Ross’s stepfather came for him immediately and carted him back to Kent. Regina had dared not write him due to his quick departure, and she’d spent months in a state of such hopelessness that she’d felt sure she would die.
Then Ross came for Christmas and sought her out, telling her only the barest details of what the months had been like with his parents, how they’d berated him for being a lovesick boy, unable to know his own mind.
Not to be silenced, he’d argued back and, in the end, had agreed to take their offer of a commission in the army.
They’d said that if he would take two years to establish a career, they would condone the match.
“He would still have only been but twenty years old.”
“Twenty-one,” she corrected, but then shrugged. “Which would still have been young— I know that now— but our hope was restored. I could not imagine waiting two more years, but I fancied myself so in love with him that it would be worth the sacrifice.”
Timothy nodded, thoughtful as he met her eyes once again. “That is why you did not take a Season?”
Regina paced to the other side of the arbor and finally sat beside him on the bench, though it did not remedy her growing discomfort.
“It would have felt like a betrayal to Ross.” She shook her head.
“I am humiliated to think of how stupid a girl I was.” She let out a breath.
“He said he would write me, but I received only one letter from London before he left for India. He never wrote again.”