What Happened at Midnight(13)
As he plodded along the hill, just under the line of trees, he had to wonder how Mary fared on the other side. Had she been caught returning to the house at the dead of night?
And more importantly…
He took a shovel from one of the men, more than happy to throw himself into physical labor. But the repetitive motion didn’t distract him from his thoughts; instead, it focused them, bouncing them off one another in a repeating echo in his head.
Mary’s behavior last night had left him with a welter of emotions. Anger. Sadness. Physical lust so powerful that he’d had to take care of himself not once, but twice, after she’d left. He’d been so surprised—and so randy—that he’d not had time to consider what her actions meant. But now, with nothing to do but shovel dirt, he considered. And slowly, over the course of the ever-growing ditch, he grew suspicious.
He might think a great many ill things about Mary. But if she’d been the sort to try to cloud his mind by offering up her body, wouldn’t she have tried it back in Southampton? He might explain her behavior by calling her an amoral, greedy slut—but if she truly had been one, wouldn’t she have found it more profitable to throw herself at him eighteen months ago?
If she’d been able to fake that careful, innocent unfurling of passion that they’d begun to explore during their betrothal, she could easily have inveigled him into marriage. He’d been loath to let her go, and so enamored of her that a touch, a kiss, an entreaty would have bought her everything.
But she hadn’t even asked. She’d fled to this—a life of demeaning service.
And then there was the matter of her eyes—the way she’d set forth her plan to provide compensation in the form of her person. Nothing about her history—born into a well-to-do family, pampered, showered with affection and cosseted at every turn—would have brought her to his bed in that way.
The girl he had once known wouldn’t even have considered offering her body. Not only had she not known such desperation, it wouldn’t have crossed her mind to see herself as currency. To see it so much that she’d begged him to take her, to free herself of debt.
No. There were no two ways about it. If the Mary he had known—the sweet, sheltered girl who had loved to play the pianoforte—had become this woman, it was because something had happened between now and the time he’d last seen her.
In these last eighteen months, someone had done a grave harm to Mary. His fists clenched around his shovel at the thought; he slammed the tool into the ground with such force that it clanged against the old tile a foot beneath the soil.
Maybe she had brought it on herself.
But he couldn’t believe it. Even if she’d lied and cheated and stolen, it wouldn’t justify what he’d seen last night.
She’d been willing to offer him her body in exchange for his silence. What threat could he make that would wrest the truth from her? Nothing he would consider doing to her was as bad as what she’d been willing to do to herself. No, if he wanted to have the full truth from her, he wasn’t going to get it by yelling and blustering.
“God damn it,” he swore.
“Your pardon, sir?” They’d dug far enough to reposition new tile, John realized. And he’d spoken aloud. The laborer who stood next to him was frowning in consternation.
“Ah, nothing.” He stared up the hill, at the cottage he couldn’t see. “I think, though, that I have…”
Why was he making excuses to this man? The laborer was used to working with Beauregard, who couldn’t see fit to bestir himself from his house before nine in the morning.
“I have other things to see to,” he said. “Up until we hit that little rise up there—just dig up the old and lay the new flat. I’ll want to look it over before it’s covered again.”
A grunt was the only reply.
He didn’t need more. He left to wash his hands—and to make his way up the hill to find some answers.
IT WAS A MORNING precisely like yesterday morning: The sun was hot in the sky, breakfast was spread on the table, and Mary sat in the shade of the rowan.
It all felt fragile and unreal to her, as if her mouth were full of cotton. As if she were encased in a bubble of false, cozy normalcy, and the slightest pinprick would send her crashing down.
“Falls of lace,” Lady Patsworth was saying, “thrice gathered over undersleeves of brocaded silk—”
Sir Walter stopped abruptly. “What in blazes is he doing here?”
Mary looked up. There was her pinprick—not just one, but a dozen vicious points of cold, pressing into her skin. John Mason was coming up the road; she could see him over the low hedge.
She wasn’t sure whether what had happened the previous night had been ill luck or good. In the firm light of day, she wasn’t even sure it had really transpired. She remembered the events of the evening as if she’d read them in a story—as if they’d occurred in some strange, distant person’s life. Another woman; not her. But John was coming. It had really happened to her.
Ill luck. It had all been ill luck. She had no idea how Sir Walter would take the news that John had to deliver. The truth of what she’d done last night would get her sacked, and no magistrate would listen to her claim for back wages if they heard that sordid tale. Without realizing what she was doing at first, she closed her hand around the silver teaspoon by her plate, hiding it away in her fist, as if she might secret it in the folds of her skirts.