20 Lilac House #2
“Pray thank her for me. I shall enjoy them very much, as she well knows.”
“I think she would have sent you a haunch of venison if I could have hidden it in my basket, but potted shrimps are more discreet. Here are several letters that arrived for you. Oh, and there’s this.”
She deposited a purse in Cora’s lap where it landed with a metallic chink. “What is this?”
“Your allowance… jointure, whatever it is, prised from Richard’s reluctant hands by the persistence of my husband, who threatened to bring the lawyers into it if he refused. It’s yours by right, he says, regardless of where you live… or with whom.”
“Unless I marry,” Cora said slowly, weighing the heavy purse in her hand. “Goodness, how he must have hated having to give me this.”
“It’s very late, I’m afraid. Midsummer Day is long gone. We’re almost into July. Still, better late than never, and now that Mr Garford has lost his employment…” She tailed off uneasily. “I beg your pardon. It’s none of my business.”
“I will not pretend that I am not glad to have this,” Cora said slowly. “I am not at all sure how we will manage, to be honest. Cal has a little money, and I had some from last quarter, but it is not very much. I do worry, but Cal seems unconcerned about it.”
“Best to talk to him about it,” Georgie said firmly. “Jamie shows me our household accounts, and I used to have to manage on a fixed amount in my first marriage. It’s not easy working to a budget. Much better if you talk it over, decide how much you’ll have to live on and then adjust accordingly.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“Don’t assume that everything will be fine, because in my experience it might not be. Not my recent experience, I should say. Jamie’s an excellent manager. Henry… well, the less said about him the better.”
“I thought you were fond of him?” Cora said.
“Oh, I was… very fond, and I put up with his selfish ways because I didn’t know any different.
Now I do. Jamie is the better man in every way.
” She threw Cora an odd look, then looked firmly down at the teacup in her hand.
“A good husband is a great blessing, isn’t he?
I’m sure you would agree, and… and Mr Garford is a good man, and would make you a fine husband, and no one would think any the worse of you for marrying a man so much lower down the social scale than you are, so don’t you think…
? Oh, you know what I’m trying to say, although very badly, and it’s none of my business, but don’t you want to marry him? ”
“No,” Cora said firmly. “A good husband is still a husband, still a man who owns his wife and has absolute power over her.”
“I don’t think of Jamie that way,” Georgie said, frowning. “He’s more like a really good friend, and I’m sure he doesn’t think he owns me.”
“But he does. You may rub along quite happily now when you are in harmony, but if there is a disagreement between you, he will expect his will to prevail. All men do, dear, and women submit to it. It is the way of the world. It is even written into the marriage service explicitly — ‘Wilt thou obey him, and serve him’. But I do not want to obey and serve. I want to be free to live my life as I choose, whatever the cost may be. Let us not quarrel over it, Georgie. Tell me all the news from Staineybank. There must be several new teeth to report from the nursery.”
For some time, the talk was all of the youngest members of the household, but then Georgie said, “Oh, I almost forgot the big news — Timmy Skinner came back. Ben Lovell found him and brought him in, although he came willingly enough. Very embarrassed, poor boy. He’d been sure he was about to be accused and hauled off to the magistrate, so he took off, but when he thought about it, he felt it was better to face the music. ”
“Then he confessed?”
“Not at all. He swears up and down that he had nothing to do with the tea caddies. He even swore on the Bible, but Richard didn’t really believe him, so he’s been turned off.”
“Oh, how unfair!” Cora cried.
“Richard says it’s because he abandoned his post, which is true enough, I suppose, but I don’t know where he’ll find another position. He’s just the wrong age — too old to look for a child’s starting position, but not quite old enough to take a man’s wage.”
“He will have a reference, though? Surely Richard would not turn him off without a reference?”
“Hester, Charlotte and Mrs Bright all said they would write one. They even fell to arguing over which of them should do it.”
Cora laughed. “That is a blessing, anyway. Poor Timmy! And his mother so depended on his money, little as it was.”
This conversation left Cora thoughtful. Long after Georgie had left, she mulled over her words.
‘Cal would make you a fine husband…Jamie’s like a really good friend.
’ What was a fine husband? Roland had been…
hmm, she would have said he was a good husband.
She had never had much to complain about, except that…
well, all men had their quirks, surely. Georgie’s Henry had had his quirks, too, by the sound of it.
He had been a drinker, and it was not easy for a wife to live with a man like that.
But Georgie had, and had not minded at the time.
‘I put up with his selfish ways because I didn’t know any different,’ she had said. ‘Jamie is the better man in every way.’
Cal was a better man than Roland, of that she was certain.
He had never raised his voice to her, never expected anything of her, never showed the slightest impatience.
Was that because he was lower down society’s ladder than she was?
Perhaps he was merely deferring to her as his superior in rank.
Yet he never seemed deferential. He accepted her as she was, which made it possible for her to be entirely herself.
After dinner that night, when Cal and Souter had tidied up and Souter had retired to her little room off the kitchen, Cal returned to the parlour with a tray bearing Cora’s tea and his own pot of ale.
“You’ve been very quiet this evening, Cora love,” he said, sitting at her feet, legs neatly crossed. “Has Georgie’s visit unsettled you?”
“Oh no, it was lovely to see her.”
“But it must remind you of all you’ve thrown away to be with me.”
“Thrown away? I have chosen to leave my old life behind, that is all.”
“No regrets?”
She smiled, and ran her hands through his hair with a sigh. Such lovely thick hair he had, with no sign of a receding hairline. Not like Roland!
“No regrets, my love, although she did say some interesting things. I always thought she was head over heels in love with her first husband, and Jamie was very much second best, but she was very clear that Jamie is the better husband, whatever that means. It made me wonder a bit.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “About marriage? Us?”
“I wondered what it would be like, that is all. Whether you would turn out to be a better husband than Roland. No, I am sure you would be. But perhaps that is a necessary part of marrying for a second time, to see the first husband as deficient in some way. One cannot justify marrying again if the first husband was perfect.”
“Is that what this is about — trying to justify marrying me?” He set down his pot and took her hands in his. “I’m willing, Cora love. I’ve always been willing, but the decision is yours to make.”
Another heavy sigh. “I do not think I could fly if we were to marry, and I do so love flying. So long as I have you, I can live without my family. They are grown now and no longer need their mama. I thought it was my duty to interfere in their lives and set their feet on the right path, but they are more capable than I gave them credit for. They can take care of themselves. As for the shopkeepers refusing to serve me, I care nothing for that. But church… I do not like to lose the right to attend church. God has been an inseparable part of me my whole life and I feel curiously adrift without Him.”
“He’s still there, Cora. I talk to Him in the forest, under the trees. I feel much closer to Him there than in a church. But if you can’t go to St Timothy’s or the Staineybank chapel, you can always go to one of the Brinchester churches.”
“But I have been barred by Mr Templeton! How can I go to any church?”
“You’ve been barred from his church but not from all churches. There are thousands of them all over England. Pick any one you like, and we’ll go there to live.”
“But it would be the same!” she cried. “As soon as the parson discovered my situation, I should be barred again.”
“We could pretend to be married,” he said, smiling at her.
“I do not like to pretend.”
“Really? There’s a great deal of fun to be had when people think you’re something you’re not. Very well, we could marry — no pretence and no being barred from church.”
“Richard would gloat,” she said glumly.
“And that’s a serious obstacle to our marriage, I vow. Such a principled stance can’t be denied. At all costs, Richard must not be allowed to gloat. Then there is no help for it, we shall have to separate.”
“Never! Richard would gloat even more.”
He laughed. “You’re a darling, do you know that?”
“I am being awkward, I know that much.”
With a shake of his head, he stood and held out his hand to her. “No, we just have to be clever, that’s all. Let’s go to bed and I’ll tell you my foolproof plan to ensure that Richard can’t gloat.”
“Really?” she said, taking his hand as she stood.
“Really. I think it resolves all our outstanding issues.”
Meekly, she followed him through to the bedroom.