Chapter 35
Nobody at Huntington House asked her a single sensible question until four o’clock, which was the reason she had come.
She was shrieked at on the gravel by Augusta.
She was put in a chair and given cake she did not want.
Her mother said that she looked thin, and then said it again forty minutes later as though it were a new observation.
Her father took her out to look at a wall he was having rebuilt and talked about brick for twenty minutes.
Alexander lost eleven shillings at pall-mall and blamed the weather.
They did not ask where her husband was.
That was what undid her. None of them asked. Her mother came within a yard of it twice and turned away both times. Evan, who never spared anybody anything, looked at the empty place beside her at luncheon and continued eating.
They have decided among themselves. At some point this morning, in a hall, my family agreed not to ask me. They are all being careful with me. I have become a woman people are careful with.
She lost at pall-mall. She lost badly, in four minutes, and did not mind in the least.
“That was on purpose,” Augusta said at her elbow.
“It was not.”
“You let Evan take your ball, and you were looking at the hedge.” Her youngest sister squinted up at her. “Where is my brother-in-law?”
Everybody within twenty feet stopped moving.
“At home,” Leonora answered. “With Katherine.”
“Why?”
“Because somebody must be.”
“Mrs. Pike could have watched her,” Augusta reasoned. “And then he could have come and played. He is the only person who has ever beaten Evan, and I have been waiting since May to see it done twice.”
“Augusta,” their mother called from the terrace, in a voice that could have stopped a horse.
Augusta, who was twelve and not stupid, looked from her to Leonora and worked out in the space of a breath that she had gone somewhere she was not meant to go. Face scarlet, she declared, “I shall fetch the balls.” And then she fled.
Leonora was left standing on the lawn with her mallet.
There. One of them managed it. It took a child until four o’clock, and now they all know that I have no answer.
Marina looked at her across the grass with her mallet slung over her shoulder and said nothing at all, and waited until the light started to dim.
They ended up in the orchard, on the wall, the way they had since they were nine.
“Right,” Marina said.
“Don’t.”
“I have said one word.”
“You have said one word in a particular voice, and I know precisely what is behind it.”
Marina swung her boots against the brick. “How long has it been since he touched you?”
“Marina.”
“I am your twin, and there is nobody within a hundred yards. Either you tell me, or I shall guess out loud, and my guessing is famously worse than the truth.”
Leonora covered her face with her hands.
“Nineteen days,” she muttered.
“Nineteen.”
“I have counted. I have counted every one of them, and I am not proud of it.” She dropped her hands.
“And before you say it, he has not been cruel. He has been kind every day. He is at breakfast four mornings out of six now. He lies on the floor and lets Katherine climb over him. He dug a field because I wrote him a note about it. He passes me the salt with the manners of a man handing a lady down from a coach in the rain, and every night he goes to his room and shuts the door, and I lie there and listen for his movements.”
“Nora.”
“I bought him a painting,” Leonora continued. “I paid sixteen guineas for it. I stood in a room full of candles and gave it to him, and he looked at it and told me exactly what it was, which nobody else in England would have seen. Then he came toward me, and I stopped him.”
Marina’s head snapped around. “You stopped him?”
“I told him I would not take a kiss from a man who was grateful.”
“And what did he say?”
“Nothing,” Leonora uttered. “I asked him for one true sentence. One. I told him it needn’t be a promise or love. And he opened his mouth, only to say nothing. Then I kissed his cheek and went upstairs and sat on the floor until four in the morning.”
The orchard was very quiet. Somewhere in the house, somebody was calling Augusta in.
“There is something else,” Leonora admitted. “You will not like it.”
“Go on.”
“I want a child.”
Marina stopped swinging her boots.
“Not for the reason everybody will assume. Not for the succession and not because Mama has underlined the word news twice in every letter she sent since May.” Leonora looked down at her hands.
“But because Katherine will be lonely in a very large house with a father who was lonely in it before her, and because I have four siblings and I have never once been lonely in my life. I should like to give her that, but I am not going to be able to, and I have to stop wanting it.”
“Nora.”
“So there it is. All of it. That is my situation laid out plainly, and I shall not speak of it again.” She let out a long breath. “I am thinking of coming back home.”
Marina did not say anything.
“For a few months, not forever. I would take Katherine, because Colin would let me. And that is the horror of it, Marina. He would let me have anything I asked for. I could say it at breakfast tomorrow, and he would arrange it before luncheon and would be kind about it.” Leonora’s voice shook.
“I cannot live in that house and not be able to touch him. I have tried for nineteen days. I go into rooms hoping he is in them and then I am careful for an hour, and I am so tired of being careful that I could lie down on this wall and sleep for a week.”
“Then come back home.”
Leonora turned to look at her sister. “You are meant to argue with me.”
“I know I am.” Marina’s chin was up, and her eyes were wet, which happened perhaps twice a year.
“I have been arguing with you since May. I told you to set his house on fire. I told you that you were arranging to be content and that it was the worst thing I had ever heard you say. I have watched you do it, Nora. You went back into that house, fed his tenants, opened his gallery, made a child laugh, got a man who had not been seen in six years into a box at the opera, and you did it all without one single promise from him.”
“Marina—”
“So, no, I shan’t argue. If you have done all of that and he still cannot say one sentence, then come back home, and I will fight Mama for you.
And you may have my room, because it is warmer.
” She dragged her sleeve across her face, furious about it.
“In ten years, you will be a duchess with a house and a daughter, I will bring my horses, and it will be a life. It will be a good life. It is only not the one in your desk drawer.”
Leonora leaned her head against her sister’s shoulder. They sat on the wall for a while as the last of the light faded.
“Marina.”
“Mm.”
“What did you do at the Farrow house party in November?”
Marina went absolutely rigid. “I got into a lake.”
“You got into a lake, you have told Emily about a horse three times, and you have changed the subject about your dare eleven times since May. You are the only person in this family who has never once been able to lie to me.” Leonora lifted her head. “Somebody saw you.”
There was a very long pause.
“Go home to your husband, Nora,” Marina muttered.
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one you are getting tonight, and you may have the rest of it in about a year. When you do, you will be extremely unbearable about having guessed.” Marina jumped down from the wall and stood in the wet grass in the dark. “Do you want the truth about the horse?”
“Yes.”
“There is no horse.” She said it steadily.
“There has never been a horse. I went into a lake in November. There was a man on the bank who was not asleep with everybody else. He has said nothing about it to anybody for a year, and I do not know why. That is what I think about at four in the morning. Not the lake, but his silence.”
Leonora sat very still on the wall. “Marina.”
“No. It is your turn to be miserable, and I have had a great deal of practice at listening.” Marina put a hand up. “Come down, it is nearly dark. Or else Mama will send Alexander, and he will make a joke, and I shall have to hit him.”