What Happened at Midnight(8)
She couldn’t stay, not with John in the vicinity. Yet she couldn’t run. Without any money at all, she’d only end up worse off than she was now. She might confide her troubles in Sir Walter, but giving the man an extra weapon to use against her didn’t sit well. She wanted to scream. She was helpless, pinned to this house by the slowly shortening leash of her penury.
But then, so was Lady Patsworth. The woman had pointedly ignored Mary’s exchange with her husband. She sat on the terrace, her spine ramrod straight, and studiously read the London paper.
“Lady Patsworth,” Mary tried.
“Cord of silk,” the woman responded. “Do you think that cord of silk might do, after all?”
“Lady Patsworth, please. Do you think you could ask your husband to pay me my wages?”
Lady Patsworth did not look up from the paper. She did not acknowledge those words, not with so much as a blink of her eye. “Perhaps,” she mused, “not in white. A black, or perhaps a gold—that would give it a military look. Very sharp, I think.”
Lady Patsworth was not simple, no matter how she acted. She’d simply learned that it was best if she didn’t attend to the unpleasant parts of life. As so much of her life was unpleasant, she scarcely attended to anything.
“Or, perhaps, you might be willing to advance me my wages from your own funds.”
Lady Patsworth set down her paper. She didn’t look at Mary, but she angled her spoon so that the bowl caught the sun, twisting it so it sent bright flashes into the leaves of the trees. “He reads my letters before they are sent,” she said quietly. “He hires my servants. He does not let me leave this property. Do you really imagine that he allows me any pin money? If he did, I would have found some way to get a message to my brother.”
Mary swallowed.
“Lady Northword used to make her home here,” Lady Patsworth continued. “I once found what I believe to be a piece of her jewelry, hidden between the floorboards. He won’t even let me call on her to return it. And when she came by to pay a call, he told her I was indisposed. The most I can hope for is what you just saw—that I might be allowed to sit silent and unresponsive when a neighbor comes to call.”
“Surely there is something that can be done.”
“No,” Lady Patsworth said. “There isn’t.”
There was no yelling in Sir Walter’s household. There was no dramatic posturing, no screaming, no fighting. There was only Sir Walter’s indomitable hold.
The worst part was, Mary couldn’t even figure out how to voice a complaint. It would not sound so awful if she told someone about it. He never hit his wife; he’d never touched Mary, and she’d seen enough of the world to be thankful for that. But it would almost have been better if he had struck out. At least then she would have had tangible proof of his character.
She had to leave. She couldn’t go. These two facts butted heads with one another, but neither came out the victor.
“Is there not something you can do?” Mary asked in desperation.
But Lady Patsworth had already picked up the paper, folding it back to the fashion page. And that was answer enough.
Mary could do only what Lady Patsworth did: She could endure, and pretend that none of this was happening.
MARY’S AFTERNOON WALK WAS NOT, it seemed, to be a dash for freedom today—just an amble around the boundaries of her cage. Her absence was strictly timed, and the stable grooms were always positioned—Sir Walter said—to prevent her from accidentally intruding on the neighbors’ properties and incurring their wrath. Besides, he didn’t trust the laborers at Beauregard’s farm to treat her with the respect that a well-bred lady deserved. For her own good, she had to be confined.
The end result was the same. She had only a few fields to explore, a small slice of land squeezed between the neighbors’ hedges. Her terrain stretched down the hill north of Doyle’s Grange, terminating at the creek in back. Forty-five minutes of leisure multiplied by the months that they’d been in residence meant that she knew every inch of that space. She would have no escape today, just a temporary change of prison. Still, she tore out of the house and down the hill, wanting only to get away.
Late summer was the worst season to wander. The path between the hedges had grown over. By now, the thistles were tall enough to scratch her calves under her skirts. As for the nettles… Her arms were bare, and the nettles had grown waist-high. All that rain last May had gone straight into producing tall prickly stalks and stingers, all determined to thwart her temporary flight for freedom—or at least solitude. Her pace slowed to a walk and then to a few steps at a time.
There was a trick to stinging nettles. If one walked right through them, one would end up red and itching all over. But only the bottoms of the leaves stung. If one were careful, one could take hold of the plant by pushing down on the tops of the leaves, and then very carefully moving it to the side…
“So,” a voice said behind her. “I’ve found you.”
The man spoke just as she held the offending plant at maximum distance from herself. Mary let go in surprise; it sprang back into place, slapping its stingers against her bare arm. It felt as if she had been attacked by a half dozen ants all at once.
She bit her lip and muffled an oath, slapping her gloved hand over her smarting flesh.
“John,” she gasped and then, when she took in his folded arms and disapproving stance, remembered that her actions the last eighteen months had erased any claim she had to intimacy. “Mr. Mason,” she corrected herself. “Whatever are you doing here?”