Chapter Six #2
She wished she had her workbasket beside her.
It would have been nice to be doing something.
As it was, she sprinted to the window bench, where she could pretend to be observing the street, and folded her hands in her lap.
Though Pembroke Street was no bustling thoroughfare, there was a boy with a ball and an old woman waving a broom at him, but Maria noticed neither one, being too aware of her husband pausing in the doorway, saying nothing.
When she could stand it no longer (that is, about two seconds later), she whipped about. “Now you must tell me. You must. What has alarmed or displeased you, Mr. Ellsworth?”
Leaning against the jamb, his stony gaze met hers. “How do you like the place? Is it to your taste?”
“I have no fault to find,” she answered, plucking at her skirts in impatience. “But you have, clearly.”
“A smaller apartment would have been more practical,” he continued.
“I had chosen one, consisting of just a sitting room and a bedroom, which my fellowship would have paid for. It would have meant taking our meals in the sitting room, or else eating them at a common table with other lodgers. I am used to such things, coming from the College, but the baron found this one—”
“If you have decided this place is too dear we can find another,” she said quickly. “When the lease ends.”
She didn’t think she was lying when she offered this, but—no, on second thought—she was absolutely lying.
Iffley Cottage was compact, but it had a separate dining room.
And Maria had never taken her meals in the company of anyone but family and friends, unless she counted inn meals while traveling, which she did not.
Lord Dere had been right to guess she would balk at it.
I suppose other lodgers might become my friends. With time. But it was difficult to imagine sitting down for dinner with companions like Mrs. Chop or Miss Pork and not finding it uncomfortable.
You’re a poor man’s wife now, she reminded herself, and must learn to make accommodations.
“If your fellowship would have paid for the smaller apartment, how have we afforded this larger one?” she asked abruptly. “Do you mean to say—someone—has paid for some of the lease?” If “someone” had, it could only be Lord Dere. Who else but the baron?
A muscle in his jaw tightened. “I do. As I have just learned for myself. He had proposed this charming tenement to me in place of the one I had in mind. Gull that I am, I thought it must be at the same rent. I thanked him and congratulated myself on my good fortune.”
“But how did you—what made you guess he might have…played this kindly trick upon you?” she pursued.
“Hard to say. Though it might have had something to do with the additional pieces of furniture which have appeared since I was last here.”
Maria’s mouth popped open. Lord Dere had bought them furniture as well?
“The apartment was not empty when I rented it, of course,” he went on. “Chop and Pork had a chair or two, along with a deal table in the dining room and two chairs which looked ready to collapse at the slightest weight. But all this…” His gaze traveled over the room.
Was everything, she wondered, from the sofa to the library case to the Dutch clock on the mantel and the cushion she sat upon, all the gift of Lord Dere? It was too entirely, completely, absolutely possible.
Mr. Ellsworth might be horrified, but Maria could not own herself surprised by the revelation, having known the baron so long.
“I suppose you think him…interfering for it,” she ventured.
He shot her a sharp look. “Did you know about this?”
“I didn’t! On my honor!” she declared. “But I must confess it is…like him. That is, my family has known him to—er—enjoy such acts of generosity.”
A long pause.
Then, even more stiffly: “Ah. Let us say then that, unlike you, I have not been long acquainted with the baron and am therefore wholly unused to accepting charity.”
Charity! The word smarted. It was one even Mrs. Markham Dere refrained from applying to the baron’s gifts, at least in the Barstows’ hearing.
And, in truth, Maria’s family had been so long in the habit of benefiting from Lord Dere’s thoughtfulness that, though Mrs. Barstow never made requests or dropped hints, it was equally the case that she had ceased to make a fuss on each occasion.
Not only because the baron disliked it, but also because one could not continually be making a fuss.
But how could Mr. Ellsworth understand this, new as he was to the family, and having been made a part of it by force of circumstance alone?
“You see, he means to be kind,” she tried to explain. It was inadequate, but she hardly knew how to begin. Turning from the window to face him directly, she regarded him across the width of the parlor. Saw his mouth tighten.
“I do not think him unkind,” he said stiffly.
“But what about the ‘interfering’ part, then?”
Drawing a long breath, he dragged fingers through his dark hair. “I suspect your family has long been in the habit of considering him your fairy godfather, but I have been equally in the habit of standing on my own feet. Of thinking myself an independent man, for better, for worse.”
Maria’s pulse quickened, not only to hear repeated in this context the words of their recent ceremony, but also at his implied insult to the Barstows.
“You—speak of us as if we were…some species of parasitical hangers-on!” she accused, thinking wildly that Lord Dere, with his love of insects, would probably be able to suggest which specimen her family most resembled. “And—and who says you are not independent now and standing on your own feet?”
He made a sweeping motion, his gesture including the furniture, the room, the lodgings—perhaps even her. Perhaps even especially her.
“I say it,” he answered. “I lost the power to call myself an independent man when I blundered into your chamber at the Bolt in Tun. From that moment I have been carried along like flotsam on the tide—that is—I have been at the mercy of the consequences. Do not suppose I accuse you or the baron or anyone! I have no one to blame but myself, but I do blame myself. I am surprised you don’t rage at me too. Though—perhaps you like being married.”
As a matter of fact, she didn’t like being married at this particular juncture, and any of the Barstows would have recognized the fire kindling in her eyes. The knowledge that some portion of herself had indeed been pleased and willing to marry him, just as he guessed, only made her angrier.
But if this was to be the first fight of their married life, Maria aimed to do her best by it. Yes, indeed. She had been raised with too many siblings to be knocked down now like ninepins!
“I don’t know if I like being married or not,” she retorted, “for I haven’t been married long enough to draw conclusions.
And neither have you, sir. I—understand—how you might feel overwhelmed by circumstances, but I would remind you that, in all the world, I might be the only one who does understand! ”
“In part, yes,” he answered, almost before she finished her sentence.
“You understand in part. And—I should be grateful for that. Just as I daresay you think I should be grateful for such a person as Baron Dere…involving himself in my affairs. And perhaps it will come to that.” He made another dash at his hair, muttering almost inaudibly, “When my spirit is broken enough.”
Now Maria leapt to her feet, hands balling in fists, hardly understanding on whose behalf she was outraged, or whom she need defend.
“If you think this will break your spirit—being—being—given more wedding gifts than you expected, than your spirit was never very hardy to begin with!”
“That may be, madam,” he replied swiftly, “and you may think a man’s pride a silly, worthless thing, but you will find few men deserving of respect who have altogether lost theirs!”
“I didn’t say a man’s pride was silly and worthless—”
“Not in so many words. But you said—”
Thump—
thump—
THUMP.
The Ellsworths’ squabble broke off mid-sentence, and both of them stared downward at the floor, aghast.
Thump—
thump—
THUMP.
“What is that?” whispered Maria, who had never experienced the like.
Her husband, more practiced in living with others on all sides, made a face. “That is the sound of someone striking her ceiling with a broom handle and desiring us to lower our voices.”
Maria went crimson. “Do you mean we were…overheard?” As if she didn’t know the answer already! She who had easily caught the buzz of voices when he had gone down earlier to speak with Mrs. Chop.
In answer his eyebrow arched, and Maria clapped a hand to her mouth. How utterly mortifying! To be heard quarreling like cats, and on their wedding day!
“Shall we go on our walk now?” he asked wickedly. “Leave Chop and Pork in peace?”
Her chin lifted. “We shall not,” she hissed. “Because we must have this out, and we can hardly do so in the streets. We will—that is—hadn’t we better go upstairs?”
She hardly thought she could go redder, but to hear her own unintentionally warm suggestion had that effect.
However, if the alternative was to go down and try to sneak out, after having made such a commotion, resuming their argument in one of the bedrooms could only be considered the lesser of two evils.
As it was, Maria thought she would have to let herself down from the window, if she ever wanted to leave the apartment again.