Chapter Seven
For what is wedlocke forced but a Hell,
An Age of discord and continuall strife.
By the time he followed her up the stairs to the front bedroom, Mr. Ellsworth’s momentary flash of humor (albeit mocking humor) had evaporated.
His unhappy regard took in their surroundings again, and Maria could only guess that, on this second, slower survey, he noticed even more furniture not native to the premises, each piece an affront to his pride.
As she had earlier, on this inspection he took the time to open every door and drawer.
“They’re not stuffed with jewels, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“Too bad,” he returned. “We might have pawned them, then.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Mrs. Ellsworth, let me be perfectly plain: I don’t intend to take another cent from Lord Ranulph Dere, and if you are to be my wife, nor will you.”
That brought her back to a boil.
“If I am to be your wife?” she shrilled. “Hard luck, sir, for I am already that!”
“Then will you do as I say, even if you think my reasons ridiculous?”
“I didn’t say I thought they were ridiculous!
” cried Maria, here actually stamping her foot.
“I only meant to say that I wish you would take Lord Dere’s gifts in the spirit they were intended!
He-he-he loves to give people things! He did not do it to insult you or to break your spirit or to—to imply that you—you—why, he still gives Della and Gerard regular money for the school, I’m certain, and it has been nearly ten years since Keele’s was founded! ”
Instead of drawing comfort from this news, however, Mr. Ellsworth all but collapsed onto the empty shelf of the clothes-press, his complexion ashen.
“Oh, heaven have mercy,” he breathed.
“What?” she asked, taking a few concerned steps toward him before she stopped herself. “What is it?”
He was shaking his head, his eyes far away. “Isn’t it obvious? It’s just further proof of what I’ve married into. I’ve become a kept man, in a stable of kept men.”
“A—what? Nonsense. My brothers-in-law are not kept men!” she bristled, indignant hands on her hips.
“You tell me the Weatherills continue to depend on gifts from the baron after nearly ten years—what is that but being kept?”
“It isn’t!” she insisted, her vexation increasing as she felt the threat of tears. She would not cry. She would not. Even if they were tears of rage. She would not cry.
“Though the Weatherills might accept a little assistance to manage the school, it’s for the school, don’t you see?
” Maria choked. “And I don’t believe the Egertons require or receive anything from the baron, nor Frances and her Adam.
So it wouldn’t be accurate at all to call your new brothers-in-law all ‘kept men.’ Nor to call yourself that, either, for one only marries once, ideally, which means there will be no more ‘gifts’ of this magnitude from Lord Dere. ”
“Thank God for that, for I would return every one of them.” Heaving a sigh, he propped his elbows on his knees, his head dropping into his hands.
“I know I’m behaving like a churl,” he said bleakly.
“For which I ought to apologize. It’s just that I thought—I had faced and reconciled myself with the—low point—the lowest ebb of my fortunes—when I gave up what I had planned for my future. Just as you did.”
He was referring, she knew, to having given up the young lady he had loved. The young lady he probably still loved, given how short a time he had had to vanquish his feelings. It was not an allusion calculated to soften Maria’s heart.
“But now you find there is a new low point?” she asked, thankful her voice did not shake. “A new lowest ebb?”
“It makes me sound ungrateful, I am aware,” he conceded.
Ungrateful, yes. And add to that “ungracious.” As well as “ungallant.”
“It’s just that every new discovery—the rent, the furniture, the donations to Keele’s.
It brings everything home again. The finality of it all.
The permanency of our situation. My new—dependency.
The obligation—” He broke off, biting his lip.
Then his hand clenched, and he slowly pounded the shelf he sat upon, once, twice, with his fist.
At least the baron bought good, sturdy furniture, thought Maria bitterly. It can take a little abuse.
“What a fool I am,” he went on, more to himself than her. “Some thoughts are better kept to oneself.”
Truer words were never spoken, for Maria had a hundred such unutterable thoughts.
Childish ones like, “Well, I’m no happier than you are, Mr. Lowest Ebb!
” And—“Dependency? Would you rather you had married someone who could bring nothing to the match?” And— “Oh? And I suppose marriage to Miss Whatshername would have entailed no ‘finality’ or ‘permanency’ or ‘dependency’ or ‘obligation’? Or they would, but you wouldn’t mind because she is she and I am I? ”
See? Unspeakable.
In her defense, if her thoughts were cruel or retaliatory, surely there was not a woman living who liked being called the low point, the worst thing that ever happened to a person—the millstone around someone’s neck! The injustice of it fizzed inside her like an angry wasp.
But Mr. Ellsworth was still in his own little world of misery and oblivious to hers.
“I wanted to marry on my own terms,” he muttered. “I had my plans, which I intended to carry out, however long it took. I would make enough money, save enough money, to provide for a wife and family before I would consider embarking on the married state—before I even pursued—”
Her quick movement, a hand flying to her midsection to brace herself, interrupted his thoughts, and he looked up, color flooding his face as it did hers.
“I know,” croaked Maria, swaying a little. She felt as if someone had plunged a knife into her breast. “I know you wanted to marry somebody else.”
Inhaling sharply, his lips parted and his throat worked, but nothing emerged.
“You said yourself in London that you went to Gray’s to see what it would cost to re-set your mother’s stone in a new ring,” she said inexorably, beginning to tug at her glove.
“You may not have—pursued—her yet or committed yourself in words, but I know you had your wife chosen. You cannot deny it. Because that ring was not for me. You had not yet stumbled into my bed.” At last succeeding in ripping off her glove, she thrust her hand before him, adorned with its plain gold band.
“Here is my ring, sir. It has no stone and was not your mother’s, I daresay.
The London ring—that one—was not for me. Was it. Tell the truth.”
The silence which followed seemed to Maria to last a century. Her hand fell back to her side, her temper draining from her, and she sank wearily onto the room’s one dainty chair beside the fireplace.
Then, slowly, with great reluctance, her husband said, “I do not deny it.”
Swallowing, she nodded. Swallowed again. “But now you are stuck with me, sir. The wife whom you didn’t ask for, who came too soon, and who brought with her the—charity—you didn’t want.”
“I did it to myself.”
She knew that, and he knew that, but it still helped a little to hear him say it.
A little.
“What is her name?” Maria asked.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. She is in the past.”
Fiddlestick. If he had already succeeded in ousting this mystery lady from his heart, his affection for her must not have been worth a straw.
One thing was clear to Maria, however: she might have been willing to share a room and a bed with her new husband, but neither duty nor her own inclination required her to do so with a third person.
“This will be my room, if you please,” she announced therefore, straightening and drawing the rags of her own pride about her.
Though he might insist on his rights as a husband, she supposed, he must cede to her the high ground, morally.
“If you wouldn’t mind moving your trunk to your room, I will unpack when I return. ”
Startled, he stared at her. “Where are you going?”
“On that walk I planned.”
“Alone?”
She shrugged. “You forget. I am a married woman now and may go where I please.”
There was a stocky woman hunched on the stairs leading from the Ellsworths’ apartment, ostensibly cleaning them. At least, she had a dustpan and brush, and when Maria opened the door, she ducked her head and began scrubbing furiously.
“You must be Rundell,” said Maria with the utmost dignity, hitching up her cloak to descend.
“Yes, ma’am. Did you need anything, ma’am?”
Maria shook her head. If Mr. Ellsworth needed assistance hauling his trunk from room to room, she would let him ask for it. Lest I further insult his masculine pride.
Trying to hurry past without the appearance of hurry, she was relieved to gain the front door unmolested, and she drew a deep, fortifying breath to be out of doors and alone.
That is, unaccompanied by her new husband and out of sight of the landlady and company.
In truth Maria could not remember when she had last walked entirely alone.
Perhaps to the rectory from Iffley Cottage, if her mother needed a quick message delivered, or once or twice to the Tree Inn for the post, when Reed or Irving could not be sent.
But otherwise, as a young unmarried woman, Maria had always been accompanied.
And that was in Iffley, where everyone knew everyone and where a stranger could hardly enter the bounds without postmistress Mrs. Lamb learning of it and sharing the information far and wide.
Oxford was a different matter. Even now, before Hilary Term began, the streets milled with people, many of them male, juniors and dons of Pembroke and Christ Church in particular, those colleges being nearest, and naturally many of them spared looks for the young lady with her dark hair and shy, yet defiant, brown eyes.
Not that Maria was meeting anyone’s gaze.