Distant Choices (59 page)

‘She saw you, Oriel – with him.'

‘No – not as she thinks …'

But, gripped wholly by his overwhelming need for haste, to get it over within the space his fast-erupting discipline might endure, he was not listening to her.

‘I checked – God dammit –
of course
I checked. You'd hardly expect me to take the word of a frustrated spinster, would you, and a young girl, without making damned sure – without going up there to find out? And I did. Your squire told his housekeeper he was going to Carlisle for ten days. He was there one night.
One night
. And nothing seen of him again until he turned up at Lowther Castle the week after – telling his host he'd come straight from Carlisle, in the hearing of gamekeepers and parlourmaids and the like who don't mind talking to a railwayman …'

‘No,' she said, ‘I can't bear this.'

Neither, it seemed, could he.

‘Then tell me Morag was lying. Can you? No. I know you can't. Susannah yes – very likely – but not
my
girl. And I reckon you'll hardly be fool enough to ask me to forgive you – which is what Morag thinks I ought to do …'

‘No,' she gasped, pressing desperate hands against her forehead. ‘No. No, Garron.' And what she was really saying, beneath that single, useless, unashamedly panic-stricken word, was, ‘Don't let this happen to us. Don't throw us away. Don't waste us now. Even if I were guilty I'd be asking you not to waste us. Even then it wouldn't be worth it. And I'm not guilty.'

But she had known from the start – more than ever now – that no explanation of hers could penetrate through to him, and, her own mind slipping to the primitive region of domestic violence – of domestic murder – which he too was struggling to hold away, she was suddenly aware, with horror and with sickness, of little beyond the frailty of her own female body, the ease with which his male hands might cause it to break. For if he killed her then – some voice cracking within her mind told her – she would be dead, he a murderer, Morag crucified by guilt that might never go away, Elspeth and Jamie horribly orphaned. She could not allow that. Neither, she believed, could Garron who, through all his menace, still seemed to be pleading with her – she could just hear it – to take her treacherous, but at least – thank God – living body away.

‘I'll go,' she said, without fully realizing she had spoken until, incredibly, his hard, taut mouth curved on a smile she would have acknowledged more readily on the face of an imperial inquisitioner.

‘Aye, that's what I came to tell you, bonny lass. You'll go.'

And seeing the menace visible and well-nigh lethal in him now she began to back away until he raised a hand in a gesture which froze her where she stood, even her breathing suspended in the absolute knowledge of how, at all costs, she must neither defy, nor even contradict him if she wished to remain whole.

‘All right – madam. We know what you've done. And as to the reasons …' Pausing he shrugged impatient shoulders, taking refuge – she almost wished she could not see it – in the pose of a man of extensive business affairs dismissing an employee. ‘Shall we say never mind the reasons – eh? Unless we just put it down to the morals of your class being different to mine.'

And because she dared to do no other she nodded her head in agreement, the swift gesture of ‘the woman of fashion' he may have been expecting; may even have needed to maintain and justify his contempt for her. Which was better and easier – surely? – than jealousy.

‘Good. And you'll understand, of course – being your mother's daughter – that there'd be no point in making a fuss. Not with me. I reckon you'll do as I tell you – eh?'

And hearing the menace in his voice mingled with the faint yet so unnerving plea of ‘Don't resist me. Take care, for God's sake, not to shatter my self-command,' she rapidly nodded her head.

Yes, Garron. Whatever you need to say or do to me now in order to save yourself. And me with you. Anything. Anything to keep your hands from my throat so that at least one day – whenever you can bear to hear me – I shall have a voice left in me to explain – to put as much right to all this as still remains.

And even with those words in her mind she knew she was nodding, bending to him, showing the guilt to which he had condemned her not only because he wanted – needed – to see it, but for the simple, if not pure reason, that she was terrified.

‘So there we are, Oriel. I might like to flay you alive, or I might like to forgive you. But there'll be no doing either. I couldn't afford either – could I – with three bairns to consider. Two girls among them – Aye – young ladies no less – who can't be allowed to mix with you now – can they?
Can they?
‘

She shook her head.

‘That's right, Oriel. They can't. But – since they
are
young ladies now – they can't be mixed up in any scandal either. Oriel –
can they?
‘

‘No,' she said, offering the spoken word to him as a propitiation surely – no less – that he would then have no need to shake it out of her.

‘So …' And for a moment there was silence, a pit of it in which Oriel could feel herself sinking, until, his eyes staring at her once again without seeing, his voice clipped and cold, he went on, ‘All right. We know what you've done. I don't want to know why. I want it over with – that's all. I had plenty of time, coming down from Carlisle to decide on that. So this is what you'll do. Are you listening?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then I'm going away again – ten minutes from now, I reckon – and taking the girls with me. Don't you want to know where?'

She nodded.

‘What's that, Oriel? I can't hear you.'

‘Yes.' And she had never believed, in her whole, never easy life before, the dreadful necessity of speaking a word.

‘Aye,' his eyes still glazed, still unseeing, he smiled. ‘Then I have to tell you it's none of your concern, bonny lass. Is it?'

‘No –
no
.'

‘So we'll be back – the girls and I – by the end of the week, shall we say? Friday. Which should give you time, I reckon, to pack your belongings and get out of here by Thursday at the latest.
Shouldn't it?
‘

She nodded, swallowed hard and then, driven by his empty eyes, raised at least a whisper. ‘Yes.'

Had he said where? Not, it seemed to her, for the long moment she could feel, throbbing and bare, between them, a heavy moment sinking her into that silent pit again until he pronounced curtly, from his own pit, ‘Wherever you please. It makes no difference to me.
None
. There'll be money available to you – such as I think necessary, that is. Don't thank me. Consider it as wages for covering your future escapades so as not to embarrass my girls again. That seems reasonable enough, I reckon. Doesn't it?'

But this time he did not wait for an answer.

‘We won't be meeting again, Oriel. Send your lawyer cousin Quentin Saint-Charles to me at the Station Hotel in Hepplefield – tomorrow or the day after – and I'll deal through him. He'll let you know where you can afford to live and what you can afford to spend. There'll be no reason, at any time, for you to approach me. Do you understand?'

She did.

‘Good. I'll be on my way then.'

But, crossing to the door, his greatcoat around his shoulders, he paused, swung round again and, snapping hard fingers, held out a hand towards her. ‘Ah yes – the keys, Oriel. To my cash-boxes. Even my generosity has its limits.'

Yet when, her own hands shaking, she took the keys from the belt to which they had been so securely attached for these three – had she believed them glorious? – months, and held them, rattling against each other, towards him, he did not – could not? – take them from her, remaining frozen into a pose of blank, impossibly distant command until she dropped them on the desk, on top of Susannah's letters, and, scooping them up, he walked away.

Standing quite still she could see him, through the door he had left open, ramming on his hat and gloves as she had watched him do so many times before, intent on yet another journey, issuing curt commands to half a dozen servants at once, his eyes on the clock, his mind, it seemed, on the road, the train. ‘Where the devil are those girls?' And there they were, coming downstairs one behind the other in their neat travelling capes, new hats and gloves, Elspeth's head bent to hide the tears one did not display – as Oriel had taught her – to the public, Morag staring straight ahead, blank-eyed with her own battle for self-control, her face tight-drawn and grey as early-morning ash.

What now? Hearing the door close behind them, Oriel remained, for a while, quite still by the desk, an inch away from Susannah's letters, feeling no urge – no need – to read them as Garron may well have intended that she should. Letters from Susannah who had succeeded, it rather seemed, in destroying her, certainly in wounding her, in robbing her – could one doubt forever – of so many precise and precious things she had always known to be valuable but had only found possible for herself – or even likely – these past few weeks or so.

And when the shaking of her hands, the tumult inside her chest and stomach had eased perhaps only sufficiently, it was with Susannah deliberately in her mind – Susannah meaning nothing to her and therefore being easier to dwell on than some others – that she went out herself into the hall, Miss Oriel Blake again, well-versed in the concealing of domestic tragedies, emotional dramas, who, pausing a moment to survey the masked but eager curiosity of the servants, continued quite slowly up the stairs, letting them know her requirements on her way. A carriage in one hour to take her to the station. A small travelling valise containing specific items to accompany it. The remainder of her clothing and other items of which she would presently make a list, to be packed, with accustomed care, into the required number of trunks and valises and delivered to a destination to be specified within the next few days.

‘Certainly, madam.'

‘Thank you. Please have my small valise ready not later than four o'clock.'

And then, in a state she vaguely knew to be shock, a state of cold distance, apart and almost grateful to be apart from this hot humanity, she entered – for the last time, she very clearly knew – her bedroom, assembled her toiletries, her hair-brushes, such other things as might be termed her personal bric-à-brac, changed into her own travelling clothes and, finding herself ready to take her flight too soon, sat down on the edge of what had been her bed, her well-gloved hands folded lightly, it seemed, but surely upon a bag of pale blue velvet.

Her personal fortune. Her inheritance from a woman who would have shown anger but resilience at finding herself in this situation; and would have expected her daughter to do the same.

Walk elegantly down to your carriage, child, and smile, speak graciously to your servants in conversation as you go, since only you know for certain that they are not really your servants any more. And take your leave as if you were going off to a royal dinner-party or a pleasure-trip to Monte Carlo. So that they can't be sure whether or not you'll ever be back again. Just in case you are.

So would Evangeline have advised her and hearing the trill of her mother's voice in her head, she smiled faintly, quietly, and, waiting for the clock to strike, got to her feet and began – what? Just to move as yet, to walk with a graceful body, a calm smile, a stunned mind, the ghost of Mrs Keith perhaps, yet moving hopefully in a direction which might lead her back, or even forward, to Oriel Blake.

What else could she hope for? And although, just then, with her hand on the door, her ability to hope appeared to have almost guttered out, it occurred to her – dimly at first, then with an almost irritating persistence – that, alongside the miseries and anxieties, the fears and deceptions, the very personal pains which were none of them entirely new to her, she was, for the first time in her life, very nearly free.

Surely – if only to distract herself from so many things, right or wrong, that hurt her – she ought to give
some
thought to that?

She had set off, of course, to go to Kate. But, emerging from the gloom of Hepplefield station, her back so straight that not a few of Hepplefield's respectable citizens awarded her swift glances of approval, she turned a sudden corner in the direction of Quentin Saint-Charles and – with a certainty far beyond anything she had experienced in her life – tapped, with urgency and relief and an amazing realization of what she could not deny to be pleasure, on his door. Nor – she was surprised to feel – had she doubted for one moment that he, a gentleman of locally famous, much envied, business consultations and social pressures, his letter-box full, every morning, of commissions and invitations, was indeed
there
. Waiting for her, it almost seemed.

‘Oriel?'

‘Yes, Quentin.' Her friend. She was in no doubt of that. A man whose mind, considered by everyone else who knew him to be cold, had, for a long time now, been to her so marvellously familiar. Her own mind, almost: moving so clearly in
her
direction, his vision so quietly, so harmoniously in tune with hers, that no need existed to cry out to him of her disaster. Beneath her calm, habitually pleasant manner he heard the cry of that disaster very clearly, saw it as keenly, as rationally, as he would have observed disaster in himself, waiting – as she would have waited upon him – in a manner which offered silent, but unmistakable support until, taking a chair by the warmth of his fireside, a stool for her feet, a glass of very fine wine – no doubt the finest in Hepplefield – in her hand, she smiled at him, comfortable in the knowledge that he would in no way mistake her smile for anything approaching bravado or frivolity.