Chapter Seven — The Widow and the Companion #2
Elizabeth went to her with a book in hand. “Miss Trent, may I trouble you? Lady Ashbourne’s shelves are very fine, but I cannot decide whether this volume promises instruction or punishment.”
Miss Trent looked up, startled, then glanced toward Mrs Lyndhurst.
“She is occupied,” Elizabeth said gently.
Miss Trent lowered her eyes again. “I do not know the book.”
“Then we are equal before it.”
A faint, nervous smile appeared. “I fear I am not much assistance.”
“Assistance is overrated. Conversation is sometimes more useful.”
Miss Trent’s fingers stilled among the threads.
Elizabeth sat opposite her without asking permission in a manner casual enough to be forgivable.
The rain slid down the window beside them, turning the gardens into watery green shapes.
For a few moments she spoke of nothing: of the weather, the length of the morning, the odd tyranny of indoor occupations arranged to be restful.
Miss Trent answered sparingly, but not unwillingly.
Fear in her was like a door held almost shut; a direct push would close it, but a steady presence might allow the hinges to tire.
At last Elizabeth said, “Yesterday you spoke of Margaret Ellery’s sister.”
Miss Trent’s hands clenched.
“I shall not ask if you cannot answer.”
“That is almost worse than asking.”
“Then I shall ask, and you may refuse me.”
Miss Trent looked at her then, and her eyes, usually lowered, were startling in their anxiety. “You do not understand what it is to speak when one’s bread depends upon being thought convenient.”
“No,” Elizabeth said honestly. “Not fully. But I understand enough not to despise silence before I know what it has cost.”
The answer seemed to reach her. Miss Trent looked down again, but when she spoke, her voice was steadier.
“Ruth Ellery was younger than Margaret by several years. After Margaret was sent away, Ruth came to live with cousins near my aunt’s house.
She was never strong. Not ill at first, but worn thin, as if disgrace had entered the body because there was nowhere else for it to go.
People were kind to her in the way they are kind when they wish to assure themselves they have not joined cruelty.
They brought broth. They lowered their voices. They did not ask what had happened.”
“And did she tell you?”
“Only pieces. Children hear more than adults intend, and poor girls hear more than anyone notices. Ruth said Margaret had written letters. Several. Some to Mrs Harrow, some perhaps to Lady Ashbourne, though I never knew whether they were sent or only drafted. She had found something in Sir Edmund’s papers—something about a settlement. ”
“For whom?”
“A woman. Ruth was never certain. She thought perhaps a Vale cousin, or money intended through Lady Vale’s family. It had been promised, recorded, then delayed. Margaret believed the money had been used to cover Sir Edmund’s debts.”
Elizabeth’s gaze moved, without intending it, toward Felix where he stood across the room speaking with Lady Ashbourne. He looked handsome, attentive and wholly at ease.
“Did Margaret have proof?”
“She believed so. Ruth said Margaret copied something because she feared the original would vanish.”
“Where is the copy?”
Miss Trent shook her head. “I do not know. Ruth did not know. Or if she did, she did not tell me. She said only that Margaret hid papers because she had learned that truth kept in the expected place is the first truth destroyed.”
Elizabeth felt the force of that. “And the statement?”
“She refused it.”
“The statement saying she had behaved improperly with Sir Edmund?”
“Yes. That she had mistaken his interest, threatened his marriage, and invented accusations out of wounded vanity. It would have made her own words useless. If she later spoke of money or papers, people would say she was revenging herself upon a gentleman who had refused her.”
“And when she refused?”
“She was sent away. Quietly. Quickly. Ruth said she begged to see Mrs Harrow before she went, but no one allowed it.” Miss Trent’s lips trembled. “Then the story came first, and Margaret after it. By the time she could have spoken, everyone knew what she was.”
Elizabeth thought of all the phrases used by society to create a woman before she entered the room: imprudent, ambitious, disappointed, unstable, designing. A vocabulary of cages.
“You said Felix once questioned you.”
Miss Trent turned pale.
Elizabeth softened her voice. “I will not repeat what you tell me carelessly.”
“It was last year. At Bath. Mrs Lyndhurst had mentioned Ruth Ellery’s name—foolishly, only in passing.
Mr Vale heard. Later, he asked how I had known the Ellery family.
He was very pleasant. He is always very pleasant.
But he asked again. And again. Whether Ruth had left papers.
Whether Margaret had written to anyone. Whether any old letters remained. I said I knew nothing.”
“Did he believe you?”
“No.” She looked toward him with something like dread. “He smiled as though he did.”
“And Lady Ashbourne?”
Miss Trent’s fear altered. It became less sharp, more sorrowful. “I fear Lady Ashbourne too, but not in the same way.”
“Why?”
“Because she is not cruel.”
“That is a curious reason to fear someone.”
“Cruel people are simpler. Lady Ashbourne is devoted to preserving what she believes honourable. Family dignity. Her husband’s memory.
The peace of those dependent upon her. If truth threatens all of that, she may not destroy it, but she will ask it to wait.
Truth that waits too long begins to look like falsehood. ”
Elizabeth absorbed this in silence. Silvermere, she had thought, had one keeper of silence.
Now she saw that it had several: Felix from interest, Lady Ashbourne from pride and pain, Miss Trent from dependence, Mrs Harrow from guilt, perhaps even the servants from loyalty.
Concealment was seldom the work of one person alone.
It became durable when many people preserved different pieces of it for different reasons.
Miss Trent’s eyes filled. “Ruth died very young. There was never enough money for proper care. By then Margaret was lost to everyone. I have carried fragments, Miss Bennet. Fragments only. They have never been enough to help anyone. Only enough to make silence feel like cowardice.”
Elizabeth reached across the table and rested her hand briefly over Miss Trent’s. It was an impulse, but not an unwelcome one; Miss Trent did not withdraw.
“Fragments may become useful when placed beside other fragments,” Elizabeth said.
Miss Trent’s voice shook. “Or they may cut the hands that gather them.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “That too.”
Across the room Mrs Lyndhurst turned, and Miss Trent withdrew her hand at once, lowering her eyes. The door had closed again. Elizabeth rose with the book she had not opened and left her without another word.
She found Mrs Harrow later in the music room.
The rain had darkened the windows so thoroughly that the candles had been lit early.
The room, so treacherous in morning brightness two days before, now seemed suspended in a dim, golden melancholy.
The pianoforte stood closed. The music cabinet, from which the blue volume had been removed, showed the absence plainly to anyone who knew where to look.
Mrs Harrow stood before it, not touching the shelves.
“Do you come to tell me what Miss Trent has said?” she asked.
Elizabeth paused. “No.”
Mrs Harrow turned.
“I come to ask what you wish to tell me.”
For a moment Mrs Harrow looked tired enough to refuse everything. Then she crossed to a chair and sat, slowly, as though composure itself had become heavy.
“Margaret wrote to me,” she said. “Not once. Several times. At first with confusion, then with fear. She had found something in Sir Edmund’s papers while making copies for Lady Vale.
She believed money had been diverted. She did not know whether Sir Edmund had done it alone. She did not know whom she could trust.”
“Did she ask you to come?”
“Yes.”
“And did you?”
Mrs Harrow looked at her hands. “No.”
The answer, simple and unadorned, seemed to strike the room.
“I was newly widowed,” she continued. “My husband’s family had made it clear that my comfort depended upon my discretion in all things.
I had no child, no fortune of my own, no brother eager to defend me.
I was young enough still to believe that if I acted with perfect caution, I might avoid ruin.
Margaret’s letter terrified me. Not because I doubted her, but because I believed her. ”
Elizabeth sat opposite her.
“I told myself I must be prudent,” Mrs Harrow said.
“That I must not act on alarm. That I must first know who might be trusted. That Lady Ashbourne was grieving, Sir Edmund powerful, Margaret dependent, and I of no consequence. I wrote a reply. Then I did not send it. I wrote another. Then I waited for more information. There is such cowardice in words like prudence and waiting when one looks back upon them.”
“There may also be helplessness.”
Mrs Harrow’s mouth tightened. “Do not be too kind.”
“I am not. I dislike false comfort.”
“Then you will understand me when I say that I failed her.”
“Yes.”
Mrs Harrow looked up sharply.
Elizabeth held her gaze. “But failure is not the same as the guilt they have laid upon you.”
The young widow’s face trembled once, not into tears, but into the effort of not needing them.
“By the time I acted, Margaret had been sent away. The story had gone ahead of her. Her letters to me were gone from my desk. Mine to her had vanished. Lady Vale would not receive me. Sir Edmund was said to be ill. Lady Ashbourne wrote only that the family had suffered enough distress and that reviving painful misunderstandings would help no one.”
“That sounds like Lady Ashbourne.”
“It was beautifully written.”
“I have come to distrust beautiful letters.”