Flowers From The Storm (37 page)

It was a trial, that was evident. She was tried and tested, and found herself of more common metal than she’d ever imagined.

Even self-censure was quicksand. To tell herself that she ought to take no delight in creaturely caresses was to remember how his hand had touched hers. To disparage the carnal earthy self was to think of his face, underlit by fire radiance, a tempest distilled to silence—midnight blue and flame.

She heard a step behind her, the sound of a harsh exhalation; she turned and he was there. He stopped a few feet from her, all blown about by the wind, in his shirtsleeves, the kind of man that sensible right-walking elderwomen warned the girls not to recognize should he speak to them.

“What is it?” she asked, deliberately curt.

His mouth drew back a little, as if he tried to speak and then could not. He looked away from her, off and down. The wind blew his dark hair.

“Go back. Thou wilt catch thy death.”

He lifted his eyes. They were the color of the deepest heart of hurricane clouds, deeper blue than the sky behind him.

“Go back.” Maddy turned away and began walking.

He walked alongside her.

For a few yards, she pretended indifference. Then she stopped. “I wish to walk alone.” She said it with her face to the wind, not looking toward him.

“Where?”

She knew the violence of the demand was his affliction, that the manifest arrogance was not entirely real—but some of it was, and she turned on that. “Why must thou know?”

He stiffened a little, as a sensitive horse would bridle at a sharp word. He caught her elbow, but Maddy whirled away.

“What dost thou want of me?” she cried. “What?”

His jaw locked. He moved as if to curb her again and then, with a visible check of himself, dropped his hand. With a great effort, he said, “
Friend
.”

“I am thy nurse. That is all.”

A shadow of mockery came into his face. “Nurse…
stay
,” he said, more easily than before.

Maddy drew a breath, checkmated in her argument. It was perfectly true that no honest nurse would hare off across the countryside, insisting that her patient do without her. She pulled her cloak close around her in chagrin.

He smiled slightly, having tallied a credit to his side. “Come… back…
me
.”

“No. Please. Not now. Just… no. I wish to walk. Alone.”

The smile became displeasure. “Walk,” he said, with a jerk of his chin. “Come…
back
.”

She didn’t understand him, couldn’t find sense in the contradiction, until he left her and went to the dry stone wall that looped its way over the hill. He leaned against the rough structure.

“
Walk
,” he said, with a brief, open swing of his hand.

It was a hopeless thing now, to expect to find peace in the empty fields, but Maddy stubbornly pulled her flaring cloak against herself, turned and began to walk. She went down a hollow and climbed the next slope; she traversed another hill and valley, startling a small flock of sheep on the other side. When she reached the highest point, the wind was bitter; it made her ears ache even inside the hood of her cloak.

It was pointless, this small attempt at escape. He defeated her. What she wished to avoid was inside her; not for one instant as she walked did she think of anything but Jervaulx.

She found that she could not go on. With a renewed determination to act as a proper attendant and see her patient safely out of the unhealthy air, she started back the way she had come, carefully holding up her skirt as she jumped the little rivulets in the bottom of each hollow.

No white shirt and grim forbearance greeted her when she came in view of the rectory and church. The place where he’d waited for her was only a solitary stretch of stone piled on stone. Maddy paused—and then saw him at the crest of the hill, sitting on an outcrop of natural rock. He rose as she came toward him, a strong, elegant silhouette against the early sun.

“Come,” she said, halting at a distance that seemed safe from any emotion beyond proper nursely concern. “”Tis time to go in.“

He held out his hand. The light behind him caught unexpected color—the long stems of wild Michaelmas daisies stirred by the wind.

He made the offering without expression—neither contrition nor smile. The unexpectedness of it overthrew her, the strange brightness of the daisies in the drab landscape when they should not have been there so late in the autumn, so fresh in spite of the driving storm. She felt confused, unable to command a tolerable response, a mild and impersonal gratitude. Her cheeks, hot with chafing, seemed to grow warmer still.

“What dost thou want of me?” she cried. “I am no scarlet, yielding woman.” She snatched the flowers from his hand and threw them to the wind. The gust took them, tossed them end over end, bent the stems and rolled them awkwardly along the ground. “Thou art unkind, to beleaguer me with thy idle attentions!”

He hesitated, his head turned, frowning at her. Then heat came into his face; self-consciousness.

“Beg…
pardon
.” His expression was hot and stony. “Timms! Impert-n-nf…” The end of the word got tangled with a sound like an angry groan and laugh. He looked away, still trying to speak and failing, as if the words he wanted eluded him in the field beyond her. His lip curled, and he exclaimed, “
Idiot
.”

“Thou art not an idiot, no! Thou art a wicked, worldly man. I’ve known it since I’ve known thee. And it becomes worse and worse. Thy kisses and embraces!” She was growing feverish. “Thou art abominable.”

He looked out across the countryside, his eyes narrowed against the wind that blew his shirt and his hair.

“That cannot be between us, dost thou understand?” she added with abandon, saying aloud what should have shocked her even to think. “I am born a Friend, Jervaulx. Thou art born a nobleman.”

She had only sullen silence for an answer.

“Dost thou even know what would become of me? Thou dost not. Thou wouldst not even ask.” She exhaled sharply. “Friends would disown me. It is our way.”

Still he did not answer. He had that proud blankness about him: his look without center, gone away, as he had gone away in the chancery court.

“I would not be a Friend!” she exclaimed, frustrated by his lack of response. “I would be alone!”

“No,” he said unexpectedly. He turned and held his hand to her, palm upward, empty, a simple masculine offering. “Maddygirl. With…
me
.”

She gazed down at it. That sharp swelling pain rose up in her, stopped any more words and denials and explanations in her throat. She hurled herself away from him and ran quickly down the field, slipping on the slick green turf, sliding on her heels—almost but never quite falling, except in her heart.

The worst of it was, he made her think of it. He filled her head with falsehood and fantasy; she dreamt not only of the garden that was not hers, but of living here with him—just the two of them and Papa, quietly, in peace and industry, with Maddy working in the house and garden and Papa and Jervaulx bent with heads together over their numbers and equations. Sometimes she imagined it was Jervaulx as she had known him that one brief night before his affliction, articulate and self-possessed and teasing; more often it was Jervaulx as he was now, except that when he fought with words and frustration, she could take his hand or touch him—and that vision led to vague and not-so-vague imaginings that made her feel stirred and licentious, ashamed.

All day, Maddy avoided him meticulously. She threw herself into airing the bedrooms and cleaning the oak-paneled parlor, keeping Brunhilda with her. She spoke to Jervaulx only once, when she found him in the rector’s cold and dusty study using an old pen and leaves torn out of sermon books to make mathematical notes. He had no fire, and the only light was through a vine-covered window. In her vexation at discovering him situated so uncomfortably, she ordered him rather sharply into the kitchen so that she and Brunhilda might make the room habitable.

She would not look at him as he left, busying herself immediately with cobwebs. Brunhilda lingered at the door, and then suddenly turned and went away. She came back a quarter hour later, taking up the broom. She swept out beneath the desk and around the edge of the bookcases without a pause.

“I could give an opinion to ”ee, Mistress, if ‘ee was to want it.“

“Yes?” Maddy responded, expecting a household hint.

“Ye oughtn’t to speak so thoughtless to yer lad. There’s some as it don’t make any difference to, but there’s some as do well with loving-kindness.”

Maddy bit down hard on her lip. She went on with her dusting. Brunhilda went on with her sweeping.

“But yer older than me, Mistress,” she said at length, “and you know best. Perhaps ye didn’t see how he looked at ”ee.“

Maddy straightened the sheaf of writing paper that she’d found in a drawer. She set it in the middle of the desk, next to the freshly-cut pen.

Brunhilda bent down. “He loves ”ee well,“ she said to the dustpan. ”Ye ought not to cut at him for no reason, Mistress.“

“We need candles here,” Maddy said, keeping any inflection from her voice. “Is there a pair of shears? I wish to trim away the ivy from the window.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Brunhilda said.

Evening brought Brunhilda’s mother with fresh trout, a pudding, and cream for Jervaulx’s chocolate,

“Because Mr. Langland particularly likes it, my girl says.” The countrywoman sat down with a heave of pink flesh and began cleaning fish. “Will ye be going to church or chapel, Missus?”

“Brunhilda has not told thee I am a Friend?”

“Aye, that she has. Chapel, then.”

“Is there not a meetinghouse near?”

“There’s a grand Unitarian chapel over at Stroud. Mind you, that’s seven miles.”

Maddy smiled. “Perhaps I will stay here. I’m not accustomed to things very grand.”

“That’s a shame, then. Ye’ll never want to see our new church in the market town. ”Tis wonderful grand, with a great organ up to the eaves. The duke gave that. He had to, you see, to get the vestrymen to let him put up his library for the Mechanical Society. I must say, there’s wise men and there’s wise men, and our vestry are rare ones, nobody can gainsay it. It is a perfect spectacle, that organ.“

Maddy carefully cut a vegetable marrow. “What duke is this?”

“The Duke of Jervaulx, it is. I blush to repeat it, but a wild bad scamp of a gentleman, so they say, sharp as needles, but for common sense, I can’t vouch. All this land ye see still in sheep, that’s his. Oh, but it vexes the large farmers, who think they could do better with it. For myself, I don’t say I know. I shouldn’t like to see it change, not at my age. But I don’t mind to say I’m glad to have this old place dusted out. The Reverend Durham is your relative, Missus Langland?”

“He is Francis Langland’s friend,” Maddy said.

“What a remarkable fashion you people do talk, then. To call your own husband by all his Christian name that way.”

Maddy bent over her slicing. “It is a public testimony. Not to give worldly compliments, nor to lie and call a man our master when he is not.”

The older woman chuckled roundly. “Ye don’t call your husband master?”

Maddy kept her face down. “No,” she said, in a muffled voice.

“Don’t ye indeed. My girl says he’s a powerful handsome lad, very gentleman-like.”

“Yes,” Maddy said.

“But his mind is weak.”

She put down the paring knife. “His mind is not weak. He has been ill.”

“Without doubt, without doubt,” Brunhilda’s mother said in a comfortable tone. “That gawkhammer girl of mine, ”tis her mind needs improvement. But it’s a good heart. He’s already a great favorite with her, you know. Wouldn’t have nothing but that I stop with his cream directly I finished the skimming.“

“It’s kind of thee.”

“Think nothing of it, Missus Langland. I am glad to do it. The rector doesn’t come but once a year, and says his lesson to the Widow Small’s chickens that have wandered into the old parish church, and troubles nobody. If I can do anything for him, I will do it.”

Maddy looked at her uncertainly, not sure if this was meant sarcastically, but the woman was working with a pleasant smile on her round face.

“My William is on the vestry,” she added, “and he tells me that a meddling rector is the very worst thing this parish might have. In particular as the duke is a rash clever man and appoints the living, there is no saying what might come of it. We were all on pins, I’ll tell you that, but we like the Reverend Durham very well.”

The sound of a dog barking plagued Maddy’s dreams. It seemed to grow louder and louder, until it was someone pounding on a distant door. She rolled over in bed, opening her eyes to gray dawn filtering through the leaded glass.

The door pounding was real. So was the dog; she heard it clearly. Catching up her cloak for a robe, she hurried across the hall through an empty bedroom to look down in the weak light outside the window.

Squinting through the sleep in her eyes, she could just make out a chaise below, the horses steaming, but the jut of the old stone porch obscured its occupants. Another dog joined the first in barking. The pounding suddenly stopped. Brunhilda, surely—and a man’s voice—Durham? But he’d hardly been gone long enough to turn around and come back. Maddy ran out and reached the top of the stairs just as a black and white dog came loping up the stairwell and tangled itself about her legs.