The Solemn Bell(73)
Captain Neill must have known this was coming all along. “Yes, you probably should have. But, while you gladly pay for the doctors, and the drugs, and the experimental treatments to make me better—better to manage, I say—you cut me off the moment I find someone who makes me want to change. You see, I’ve given up morphine. I plan to be a proper, sober husband. And all because Angelica did the one thing you couldn’t—she loved me, even at my very worst.”
His mother sobbed, “You think we don’t love you?”
“Get out!” Mr. Neill shouted at them. “I want you out of my house this instant!”
Angelica stepped back from the man’s wrath.
Captain Neill angled her toward the stairs. “We had better start packing…”
But his father stopped them. “No, leave the clothes. Leave the car. Leave anything I ever paid for. I don’t care where you go, or how you manage it, but you will never take another penny from me. Seven years too late, but I wash my hands of you.”
“You would send my pregnant fiancée out into the world without so much as a motorcar to carry her?”
Everyone gasped—including Angelica. “Brody, I’m not pregnant!”
“Oh, please. If you weren’t before, you certainly are now.” He actually had the nerve to laugh. “And I, for one, couldn’t be happier. We finally have the chance to start our lives, and what better way than with a tiny, new baby?”
Angelica let him walk her toward the door. There was no servant to open it for them. As they stepped into the warm sunshine, Captain Neill took her in his arms and kissed her. Then, without so much as a word of good-bye, they set off down the gravel drive, hand-in-hand. If he was frightened, he never showed it. He seemed only light-hearted, and strangely optimistic for a man walking away from everything he’d ever known.
“Once we reach the lane, it shouldn’t be difficult to catch a ride into the village,” he said, swinging their joined arms back and forth in rhythm with his steps. “We could make it as far as Shrewsbury. Someone there is bound to put us up for the night. Then, I suppose, we’re for your place in the morning.”
“I’m not sure I want to go back there, at least not yet.”
He must have glanced down at her. “No?”
“You said we could have a fresh start. Home, for me, is not a fresh start,” she explained. “But this is. You and me. Here. Now. We could go anywhere, become anyone. We’re free! For the first time in both our lives, we are finally free.”
“If we’re going to be free, I don’t think I want to be Captain Neill anymore. That shackle has started to chafe.”
She understood completely. “I don’t think I want to be Miss Grey anymore, either.”
He brought their intertwined fingers up to his lips, and kissed them. “We had better try something else on for size, then. What have you in mind?”
Angelica grinned like a fool. “How about ‘Mr. and Mrs. Neill?’ ”
Brody laughed. “I like the sound of that.”
EPILOGUE
Brody called to his brother, and then jogged across the busy street to meet him. It was good to see Marcus again. He hadn’t heard a word from him since the wedding—but, of course, that’s how Father would have it.
He watched as Marcus gave his grimy, oil-stained uniform a sharp glance. Since striking out on their own, Brody had done the best he could to provide for Angelica. He’d taken whatever work that came his way, until finally securing a position as an omnibus mechanic. It wasn’t much, but they were able to get by.
“And the garage beats a damned desk job any day,” Brody explained to Marcus as they walked home. “I like working with my hands, staying fit. Keeping busy. Life in an office would be—to me—stagnant and stifling.”
He and Marcus turned the corner, and proceeded down a narrow street lined with soot-blackened row houses. Children played barefoot on the pavements. A tethered dog barked at them from its place on the stoop.
His address was in a humble, working-class part of town. The people were good and honest, and, after the initial shock, had welcomed the new Mr. and Mrs. Neill into their tight-knit community. Since he was gone all day, and sometimes during the night, Brody was thankful to know Angelica was at least being looked after in his absence.
It certainly wasn’t anywhere he’d ever imagined himself living, but it felt like home. Despite their poverty, and the hardships they faced, Brody and Angelica were happy here.
“This is us,” he told his brother. They stopped at the door, and Brody heaved it open. “After you.”
He followed Marcus inside, and pointed him into the dim sitting-room. The walls were papered in a hideous false damask, long faded from years of abuse. There was a fireplace, and a few threadbare upholstered chairs clustered around it. The uneven floorboards beneath their feet had been swept clean, and covered by a thick, coarse carpet. Besides that, there were a few scarred tables on wobbling legs, and a lone lamp in the corner. The space was cramped, but tidy.
“Have a seat, and I’ll fetch Angelica,” Brody said, carefully weaving between the furniture. His wife hated when he shifted anything even a hair’s breadth to the left or right—she’d inevitably bump her shin on an out-of-place table leg—and he tried not to make life in their tiny quarters any more difficult for her than it had to be.