Chapter Eight #2
Like scolded children, the Ellsworths retreated wordlessly to the parlor, avoiding each other’s gaze and listening to Rundell transfer everything from the tray to the table, grutching to herself all the while.
For her part, Maria found herself wishing for an ounce—one tiny speck!
—of Mrs. Markham Dere’s invincible superiority.
No doubt Mrs. Dere would have rebuked Rundell for her impudence or—better still—have taken her down a peg with one perfectly arched eyebrow!
(On the other hand, Maria could not imagine Mrs. Dere ever rowing with her late husband in the first place, to the point where someone had to bang the ceiling with a broom.
Far more likely that poor man had lain down in the road as everyone else did, to let his wife walk all over him.)
But Mrs. Dere was Mrs. Dere, and Maria was Maria, and somehow Maria must learn to manage a household without any of Mrs. Dere’s confidence or even her own mother’s quiet gravity, which Reed and Irving of Iffley Cottage naturally respected.
As it was, Maria hardly knew whether it were a good or bad thing that Rundell was not directly employed by the Ellsworths, but rather by Mrs. Chop.
A bad thing, probably, for it meant Maria must manage Mrs. Chop as well…
Oh, what a wretched start to everything!
The clangs and scrapes of Rundell tending the dining room fire ceased, to be followed by the groan of her rising and her heavy footfalls as she marched into the parlor.
“Will you have tea at half past seven or at eight, Mrs. Ellsworth?” she asked, with both her mouth and eyes narrowed to slots, as if suspicious she might catch them now breaking the furniture over each other’s heads or stabbing each other with pen knives.
“Half past seven, please, Rundell,” replied Maria with decision. She hadn’t the least idea when Mr. Ellsworth would prefer it, but she was not about to demonstrate yet another weakness in their marriage by having to consult him. “You may go now.”
Thank heavens the woman obeyed, though with a twist of her mouth Maria couldn’t like.
There was no time to dwell on that now, however, for ahead lay the Ellsworths’ next hurdle: their first meal alone.
Each silently wondered if the other wished to dress for dinner, but Maria did not have the courage to go upstairs and see if he had moved his trunk from her room, and Benjamin was hardly more eager to revisit the scene of their earlier disagreement.
“Shall we?” he asked after a pause.
Maria jumped up, afraid he might or might not offer his arm, and scurried ahead of him.
“I don’t know what you would prefer,” she said discomposedly, “but with only the two of us, perhaps you might rather sit closer to the foot of the table, nearer the fire. I mean, we both might sit nearer the fire. To be comfortable.”
She hoped it didn’t sound as if she were begging him to sit beside her, but if it did, he merely thanked her and assumed the proffered chair.
Then there followed only the sounds of crockery and cutlery as they served themselves.
The meal was simple, consisting of soup, cutlets, and dressed turnips, and though the Ellsworths ate steadily, it might have been paste and paper for all they tasted of it.
Maria gave thanks that Rundell had not stayed to wait at table. Then the maid would have gone downstairs to report not only the supposed violence in the passage, but also that the newlyweds hadn’t a word to say to each other!
Say something, Maria! Anything!
As if in response to her unspoken urging, her husband swallowed a particularly large lump of pork and rallied his wits. “Er—Mrs. Ellsworth, I hope you know it was an accident in the passage there. I didn’t mean to shove you into the wall.”
“Oh, no. Of course I know that,” she assured him.
The ice thus broken, Benjamin found it easier to continue. Let the biggest hurdle be cleared first, then. “And—I would like to apologize as well for my earlier conduct,” he went on. “For relieving my feelings about—everything—on you, I mean. Who were innocent.”
With a mischievous curl to her lips, she addressed her bouillon. “If we only had a pet dog, sir, you might find it convenient in the future to vent your spleen on him, rather than on me.”
“Perhaps the baron could provide us with one,” was his too-quick reply.
Then he might have kicked himself for starting it all over again, but his bride surprised him by smothering a giggle.
That brought an answering grin, and, for the first time since he had called at the Egertons’ parsonage, the two of them smiled at each other.
“I do accept your apology, Mr. Ellsworth,” said Maria, bolder now, “and pray you would do the same for me. My mama always said having many siblings makes one quicker to quarrel and slower to yield, which was me to a T this morning, I’m afraid!”
“Even a saint crumbles under enough provocation.”
“And I am no saint.” She gave a quick shake of her head when he started to demur and hurried on. “But you did say, before the wedding, that you hoped we might make the best of our situation and become friends.”
“I did. And still do hope so.”
All right, then. They were back where they started, and each inclined to be more cautious, perhaps. It was better than nothing.
Another silence succeeded this rapprochement. Each took another bite. Each racked his brain for the next thing to say.
“Where did you go on your walk?” he asked, at the same time that she blurted, “Tell me about your parents.”
“This is becoming a problem,” he said with a smile. “But as ladies must be obliged first…”
He gave her a brief history of how his French mother and English father met in Paris before the Revolution, returning to his father’s birthplace of Winchester after they fled France. It was not the usual courtship story, and Maria’s eyes were enormous.
“My goodness! France. Do you speak French well, then?” she asked. “Your mother will find my grasp of the language inadequate, I’m afraid.”
He shrugged. “I understand it well enough, but she is quite used to everyone answering her in English even if she speaks to us in French.”
“Were you writing to them…to inform them of your marriage, or do they already know?”
“To inform them,” he replied shortly, taking a hasty sip of his wine.
“Oh, dear,” she murmured. “Will they be…how do you think they will receive the news?”
“Mm.” He hated to lie to her when they had just got done reconciling, but what choice was there?
“They will be shocked, to be sure,” she supplied, when he hesitated. “Do you think they will…want to meet me?”
“Of course, of course. My father being an instructor at Winchester College, however—term time beginning there as well and such—it may be some time before that happens. The long vac, perhaps, when the roads are dry and the weather more pleasant. They’re not so young, you know.”
It was silly of her heart to sink, but sink it did. She nodded. “I daresay they may also need time to accustom themselves to the idea. Likely they might feel some disappointment, too, if they had ambitions for you making an advantageous match.”
“But isn’t that what we fought about this morning?” he asked dryly. “That the match I’ve made is more ‘advantageous’ than I wanted? No, no. My parents will not be disappointed for pecuniary reasons. They never asked more of me or my brother Austin than that we—er—marry for love.”
This declaration effectively killed the conversation again, leaving them to consume more soup and cutlet and turnips. Whatever Rundell’s opinion of them, she would at least have to praise their appetites.
Then Benjamin remembered his own question. “And—and—what of your walk? Tell me how you fared, wandering abroad in your newfound matronly freedom.”
A shadow fleeted across her face as she remembered the overbold young men, but she said only, “Yes. My walk. I first went to Keele’s to see my oldest sister Mrs. Weatherill.”
“Whom you had just taken leave of some hours earlier.”
“Indeed. But I did want to know if the school was truly only a three-minute walk away, and it is! Happily, Della was unoccupied and had leisure to explore some places I had not seen before. I knew the High Street, of course, so we confined ourselves to Cornmarket and looked into several of the churches. Did you know that, though Keele’s is so near to us, the Weatherills belong to St. Martin’s parish, and we to St. Aldate’s? ”
“I did not,” he replied, “having never belonged before to either one. New College is part of St. Peter in the East. Which did you end in liking better? The Carfax Church or ours? I suppose Oxford is populous enough that, until we required the attention of the priest, no one would remark where we attended or to whom we belonged.”
She brightened. “Do you really think so? That we might go where we liked?”
“As long as neither one of us fell sick and died, I suppose. Or needed—er—other things from him.” He took a sudden interest in sawing at his cutlet.
Wondering a moment at his confusion, a sudden memory struck her of when Mrs. Byrne, wife to Iffley’s haberdasher, bore her second child. The rector Mr. Terry had churched her and christened the infant one Sunday, and everyone had congratulated them afterward.
Oh. Those particular services. No, the Ellsworths would not be requiring any of that for the foreseeable future!
If ever, added a little voice in Maria’s head, but she banished it at once.
We have made a new start.