Ember Island (6 page)

“I didn’t even turn my back on you through all those tantrums,” he said with a smile.

Tilly’s cheeks flushed. “Well . . . I did learn to manage my temper eventually. Just.”

“You are a good girl.” He patted her hand. “I wish things could have been . . . different.”

“I know.”

“I’m glad you met Jasper when you did.”

“So am I.”

Grandpa’s estate was entailed. His own father had specified only male descendants could inherit it. That meant Tilly’s cousin Godfrey could—and would—turn her out quickly and coldly when Grandpa died. The urgency for her to marry had been pressing on Grandpa in the last few years. He had money to offer the right suitor, money that Godfrey would never part with if he had
the choice. There had been talk of Tilly marrying a family friend who was old enough to be her father, but Grandpa loved her too well to force her into a lifetime of companionship with a man she did not love.

So yes. Meeting Jasper had been perfectly timed. Now if only Tilly knew if he was still alive. Because without him, when Grandpa died, Tilly had nothing.

She smoothed Grandpa’s covers over him and kissed him good night, then let herself out of the room and headed down the stairs. Grandpa kept a small staff, and only Mrs. Granger was on tonight, quietly setting the table for Tilly’s supper.

“Good evening, Mrs. Granger,” she said.

“How is he?”

“Much the same. Still very tired.”

“I’m sure he’ll be up and about again soon.”

Tilly didn’t answer. Mrs. Granger did not want to believe that Grandpa would die; she had worked for him for forty years. Tilly waited for her to finish setting the table, idly picking off the mantelpiece the card that Jasper had given her when they first met. On it was a woodcut engraving of his house, Lumière sur la Mer, on an island in the English Channel. The front path wound up between poplars to a tall house with arched windows. She hadn’t seen the inside, but knew it intimately from Jasper’s descriptions. The tiled entrance, the sweeping curve of the internal stairs, the ceiling-high bookshelves in the library. On the one hand, she longed to see it. On the other hand, she wanted Grandpa to live forever.

“Will you eat, Miss Kirkland?”

Tilly smiled at Mrs. Granger. “I’m Mrs. Dellafore now, remember?”

“I am so sorry, ma’am,” she said with a deferential drop of her head.

“We all have other things on our minds. Thank you. The soup smells delicious.” Tilly sat down to eat, but had little appetite. She couldn’t blame Mrs. Granger for forgetting she had a husband. He was nowhere to be seen.

•

The weather stayed fine and warm, boldly cheerful in the face of her cheerlessness. Another week passed without a letter, and Tilly spent a good many hours of every day debating with herself in her head about what this lack of correspondence meant. He was dead. He was busy. The letters had all become lost. They had been addressed incorrectly and would arrive in a bundle at the very next mail delivery. She tried not to let her terror seep into the letters she wrote to Jasper. She wrote lightly, gave news about the weather and the village, but always ended with a “please write soon; I long to hear from you, my love.”

As always, she found her comfort in the garden. Summer rain had made the flowers riot through the beds, and between taming them and pulling weeds the long afternoons took care of themselves. She returned to the house in the evening, filmed with perspiration and soil, and sank into a perfumed bath to enjoy the dull ache of her muscles. She would go mad without the garden to tend. She didn’t know how other women could school themselves to an indoor life of watercolor painting and soft etudes on the pianoforte.

Tilly spent as much time as she could in the mornings and evenings with Grandpa, reading to him and listening to his stories. It seemed the nearer his death drew, the better his memory of his early life became. He told her childhood anecdotes until he was hoarse. Her mind often wandered, but she did her best to listen to
every small detail and smiled and laughed in all the right places. She could imagine nothing sadder than Grandpa being without company in his last days, and the gentle squeeze of her hand every time she left told her that he was glad she had stayed.

•

Tilly was in the garden on the Tuesday Godfrey arrived without notice. She sat in the wooden seat she’d had placed between the hawthorn hedges, with a book open on her lap. Sweet jasmine was heavy in the air. A bumblebee buzzed listlessly nearby, and she was almost falling into a doze when the clop of hooves and the rattle of a carriage roused her. She rose and rounded the side of the house to see the arrival of Godfrey’s gleaming black and red chaise, drawn by two matching bay horses. They stopped at the entranceway and the footman opened the door to help Pamela down.

Pamela. Godfrey’s wife. Tilly’s stomach turned over. Why did she have to come? Grandpa despised her. Seeing her would likely make him more ill than he already was. Tilly hurried over to greet them, saying the little mantra in her head she always said when Godfrey and Pamela were around.
Be calm and moderate. A temper serves nobody.
They were words her grandfather had said to her a thousand times.

“I hadn’t thought we’d see you,” she said quickly, as Godfrey took Pamela’s arm. He wore a tall hat and a black coat, and Pamela was in a green traveling coat that rode up over her bustle. With her perfectly rounded blonde curls and big blue eyes, she resembled nothing so much as a porcelain doll.

“I was going to send a letter,” Godfrey said, offhandedly. He was as unattractive as his wife was handsome, with mousy hair
that always looked dirty and a body like two pillows tied together. “But it was unnecessary. The old man isn’t going anywhere and it would be too shocking, I suppose, for you to allow your husband to house and feed you.”

Tilly let the jab slide. It had been delivered with Godfrey’s customary wry smile, which meant he could say as he pleased and later claim he was jesting if anyone took offense.

“How is the old man?” Godfrey asked.

“He is very tired, but otherwise in good spirits. You must allow me to go ahead and prepare him for your visit. I don’t want him to be overwhelmed.”

Godfrey was already striding for the front door, nearly bowling Mrs. Granger over to get in the house.

“Granger, we’ll have tea in the parlor, thank you,” he said.

“Yes, Mr. Kirkland,” she answered with a little nod. The slight tightness in the woman’s jaw was the only outward sign that she disliked her incoming master.

Tilly smiled at Mrs. Granger. “Do take your time,” she said.

Godfrey gave Tilly a frown, but did not push further. Pamela was already in the parlor, inspecting the drapes. “How old are these?” she asked Tilly.

Tilly knew Pamela already saw Grandpa’s house as her own, and was so outraged at this obvious and uncouth anticipation of possession that she dared not answer in case she said something everyone would regret. Instead, she tried to stall Godfrey on the stairs. “Please,” she said, “let me come with you. He’s very frail . . .”

Godfrey took her wrist firmly and set her aside. “Cousin Matilda, I love you dearly, but you have been alone with him for many years, and you will allow me some time alone with him now. Pamela, come along.”

Tilly stood back, shaking with unexpressed anger. Just as Grandpa said, Tilly had always been an angry little girl. He had taught her, through punishment as well as reward, that tempers disrupted society and girls especially, with their high voices and pink faces, ought not rage and shout.

But her patience and self-control were all an illusion for Grandpa’s benefit. Countless times she had gone home and punched or screamed into her pillows after a disagreement with the postmistress or the greengrocer or the mother who let her child tear around and crush Tilly’s foot without a word of admonishment. No matter how hard she tried, she could not stop the fire from igniting in her belly. All she could do was clamp her mouth shut so the fire didn’t escape and burn those around her.

Tilly sat on the long, embroidered sofa and waited. This sofa would be Pamela’s. Those paintings would be Pamela’s. That wallpaper would be Pamela’s. The drapes, which she had been regarding with such disdain . . . all of this would be Pamela’s, simply because she was married to Godfrey.

Tilly’s father and Godfrey’s father had been brothers, but not friends. Tilly’s father had taken his wife and his young daughter to India, where he had caught typhoid and died. Tilly and her mother made the long journey home, her mother’s belly swelling with a pregnancy that eventually resulted in her death and the death of Tilly’s unborn sibling. Godfrey’s father might have taken Tilly in and raised her and Godfrey like siblings; but Godfrey’s mother refused. And so Grandpa had brought Tilly into his home, raised her as he might have raised a daughter, and unwittingly created petty jealousies where there should have been familial love.

A little time passed—no more than fifteen minutes—and Tilly heard the door to Grandpa’s bedroom close and footsteps on the
stairs. Godfrey and Pamela appeared, and Pamela had tears in her eyes. Tilly felt a pang. Could she have been wrong about Pamela?

“The old man’s mind is addled,” Godfrey said gruffly. “He gave my wife a dressing-down.”

Tilly stifled a laugh. “Oh, dear. He does get very tired. Don’t take it badly, Pamela,” she said, touching Pamela’s cool hand softly. “I’m sure he doesn’t mean it.”

“Where is that tea?” Godfrey asked.

“Give her a little longer. If we’d known you were coming Mrs. Granger might have made scones. The best she might muster on short notice is sandwiches.”

“Yes, yes. You’ve made your point, Cousin. You’re annoyed that we didn’t call ahead.” Godfrey waved a dismissive hand. “You’ve made us feel sufficiently unwelcome so we will go.”

Tilly immediately regretted not behaving more graciously. “No, no, I didn’t mean for you to—”

“And perhaps one day soon, you will know how it feels to be unwelcome in this parlor,” Pamela said, with an arch of her fine eyebrows.

And the fire blew hot, hot inside her. “Vulture,” she spat.

Pamela put her handkerchief to her mouth in a gesture of shock. Godfrey merely smiled. Then he leaned in close and said, “Cuckoo.”

In a few moments, they were gone. Mrs. Granger came in, a tray of watercress sandwiches in her hands. “Where are they?”

“Getting back into their fine carriage and heading home,” Tilly said, her heart still thudding guiltily in her throat. “I offended them.”

Mrs. Granger pursed her lips, but said nothing. She set down the tray and left Tilly alone in the parlor. Cuckoo. A bird that forces itself upon parents that aren’t its own, then starves the other
chicks in the nest through its endless demands. That was how Godfrey saw her.

Well, it was nearly time to fly.

•

Tilly woke to the morning sun in her window. She had slept poorly the night before, and had opened the curtains to let an evening breeze into the stuffy room. The sunshine fell onto the bed covers and she folded them back so that the warm light fell instead on her nightgown, across her breasts and belly. Tilly ran her hands along her body, feeling her own curves and hollows. She closed her eyes. The pleasure was sensual, thrilling. How she longed for Jasper to touch her this way. But their wedding night had been spent in the company of physicians and worried relatives, and then he had headed off the following day with promises to see her soon. And that was that. She was married, but still a virgin. A very reluctant virgin.

Jasper had done no more than kiss her, once upon the lips, and quite coolly. But now she replayed that kiss over in her mind, deepening it and warming it, and imagining his hands sliding low to cup her breasts or press the small of her back.

Guilty and a little embarrassed, she stopped. Pulled her bedclothes up again and lay there a while looking at the ceiling.

She had no doubt that Jasper was a passionate man and would reveal that side of himself when they were finally alone together. Theirs had been a courtship closely scrutinized by the village. Jasper had been here visiting an uncle when he and Tilly met outside the tailor’s. He had been standing there, looking at his pocket watch, when Tilly emerged with Grandpa’s trousers all let out at the waistband.

Jasper glanced up at Tilly and smiled. She smiled in return, eyes greedily taking in his well-shaped jaw, his dark and knowing eyes. “I wonder,” he said, “can you tell me where I might find Duck Street? I have an appointment that I don’t want to be late for.”

“There are two ends to Duck Street,” she replied.

“Basil Forster’s. The tea merchant.”

“I’m going that way, sir. I can take you there.”

“I’d be delighted.”

They’d set off, exchanged names, and discussed the weather. She’d taken him to Basil Forster’s front path and was intending to be on her way home when he said, “I am visiting in the village for a few weeks. May I call on you?”

Tilly willed herself not to blush. “You may, sir. I would welcome that.”

Then she’d hurried off, calling herself a fool. Men as handsome as Jasper Dellafore fell in love with queenly blondes, not curvy little redheads. She went home and put it out of her mind.

Until he called. Grandpa sat with them as they had tea in the parlor. Grandpa clearly approved of the young man, who was the descendant of French émigrés living on Guernsey. He worked in trading—tea, silk, shipping materials, anything he could acquire cheaply and sell to a specific clientele—so he traveled a lot. He told them about his beautiful home, which had been in his family for a hundred years. And by the end of his first visit, both Tilly and Grandpa were enamored of him.

“You should marry him,” Grandpa had said, after he’d left.

“I barely know him,” she’d replied. But secretly she thought she should marry him too.

Within six weeks, she had. Now the wedding was behind her, but the marriage was yet to begin.

•

Tilly went to the post office early, to take her latest letter for Jasper, but also to inquire discreetly, without alarming anyone or subjecting herself to gossip, if any letter had come for her that might have been misaddressed or misdelivered. There were none. She knew there would be none, but the confirmation still stung.