Lily (24 page)

Devon searched his face, looking for a clue to his brother’s long-standing antipathy to his mine agent. “I’ve never understood why you dislike him so,” he said slowly. “Is it something I should know about? Something about Francis that I ought to be on guard against?”

“If I knew the answer to that, I’d tell you. For myself, I don’t trust him. But you went to school with him, you’ve known him longer—you
do
trust him. Since I can’t prove my suspicions, I don’t think it’s right to blurt ‘em out.”

“Well, that’s high-minded of you. All the same—”

“Just watch him, that’s my advice. Keep an eye on him. And if I’m wrong, nothing’s lost.”

They heard footsteps in the hall; a second later Stringer appeared in the doorway to announce dinner.

Clay put an arm around Devon’s shoulders—gently. “I missed you,” he admitted ingenuously. Devon clubbed him on the back and nodded vigorously—his way of returning the sentiment. “Do you know what else I missed? Women. I haven’t been with a girl since the day before I left. Not tonight—I’m too tired—but tomorrow night, let’s go to the Hornet’s Nest. Come on, Dev, I mean it, it’ll do you good, you don’t get out—”

“Yes, I’m saying yes. Fine. Let’s do it.”

Clay eyed him in amazement. “Well—great! We can have dinner at Rosreagan’s first, maybe play cards afterward. Then spend the whole night at the Nest if we want to.” He grinned in gleeful anticipation. “It’ll be like old times!”

Devon’s smile was drier, but his anticipation was almost as sharp. “You know, for a hare-wit, once in a while you have a good idea,” he said approvingly, guiding Clay down the hall toward the dining room. “As it happens, a whore is exactly what I need.”

“… B
EG YOU WILL BELIEVE
me when I tell you how much I deeply regret the terrible events of our last meeting. I have prayed every day for your full recovery, and believe God’s hand must surely be behind the miraculous news I have just received that you are well. Now my fondest wish is that you have found it in your heart to forgive me for the part I played—inadvertently and without malice, I swear—in that unfortunate misunderstanding, and that, with God’s help, we can find a way to resolve our differences. I dare even to hope that, if you would allow Lewis and me a little time to know one another, the Lord’s will and mine may draw closer together, and the union you once desired between us might one day come to pass. …”

Head down, Lily turned off the high road and walked through the gates of the twisting, sandy drive that led to Darkstone.
Liar,
she taunted herself, compulsively recalling the words she’d written to her cousin.
Schemer. Canting hypocrite.
She sent a clod of earth flying with the toe of her shoe and fisted her hands in her apron pockets. It wasn’t all a lie; she
had
prayed for him every day—at least that part was true. No matter; it was done, the letters were posted, and she would just have to learn to live with her perfidy. Desperate straits drove people to desperate acts, she consoled herself. Hearing the defensiveness in that, she gave a defiant mental shrug and kicked at another dirt clod. Nothing had changed, and she would do it again, write another letter full of half-truths and outright deceptions to Roger Soames without hesitation. There was no point in compounding one hypocrisy with another by pretending to regret it.

What she had done was to buy time, and it no longer concerned her that she was buying it with stolen currency. What mattered was getting out of Cornwall. If by some miracle her cousin still wanted her to marry his son, she was going to take advantage of his inexplicable obsession and pretend to consider it. In a little over nine months, she would come into her inheritance. Although it wasn’t much, it would pay for the most precious commodity she could think of: independence. In the meantime, all she had to gamble on was her ability to stall. Almost certainly she wouldn’t be able to stretch Soames’s patience and credulity for the whole nine months. But for now, she needed sanctuary, and if getting it meant deceiving him and accepting his help and hospitality under false pretenses—so be it. She was at the end of her rope. And it wasn’t as if she would be
stealing
from him, she told herself. If he took her in and gave her protection, she would pay him back someday—when she had money.

Enough. It was done. The likeliest outcome was that Soames would ignore her letter, so she might as well forget that she’d sent it, go on as if nothing had changed; that way she couldn’t be disappointed. Even if he responded favorably, she probably wouldn’t hear from him soon. If he traveled around the west of England preaching the gospel to his “flock,” he might not receive her letter for weeks. All she could do in the meantime was wait, and try not to hope.

It was late; her errand had taken longer than she’d expected. She’d met Francis Morgan in the village, and he’d engaged her in conversation outside the chemist’s shop for at least ten minutes. Afterward he’d walked with her part of the way back to Darkstone, delaying her further because his lazy pace was slower than her long-legged stride. At first she couldn’t imagine why he had spoken to her. He’d never noticed her before, and today they’d talked of nothing of consequence. He was about thirty, tall, yellow-haired—under his wig—and elegant-looking. Despite his undeniable good looks, Lily had never quite been able to take him seriously, perhaps because his habitual style of dress, fashionable and flamboyant, was so out of keeping with his provincial surroundings. He looked more like a London dandy than the manager of a Cornish copper mine. He’d spoken to her pleasantly enough, but when he’d finally tipped his hat and turned back, Lily had felt relieved. Looking back on the incident, she realized it was because of a new look she’d caught in his eyes, an expression of curiosity and sly speculation—the cause of which was distressingly obvious. She was known to him by now—known to all of them, she didn’t doubt—as a woman who was easy and available.

The birds were silent, the sea inaudible here. It was a peaceful time of day, but the profound stillness seemed more ominous than tranquil. A wisp of a breeze was warm, but she shivered and quickened her steps, wondering what time it was. She’d asked Lowdy to tell Mrs. Howe she was feeling poorly and didn’t want any dinner, calculating that she could be back from posting her letters in Trewyth before time to start her afternoon chores. Now she was late, and the consequences could be anything.

Circling the house to the servants’ entrance, she encountered no one, and counted it a blessing. Still, something abandoned-looking about the place made her uneasy. Her job this afternoon was to wash all the basement half-windows, inside and out. She filled a bucket from the well and carried it down the area steps to the basement, pausing to snatch a rag from the kitchen cupboard, and wondering where the cook was, or Enid or Rose. The house was unnaturally quiet. Surely dinner was over by now; where was everyone? With growing alarm, she hurried toward the servants’ hall, her footsteps sounding shockingly loud in the uncarpeted corridor. In the doorway she stopped—so abruptly that water sloshed from her bucket and hit the floor with a slap.

Fourteen heads turned at her entrance, and at the foot of the long, cleared table Mrs. Howe slowly rose to her feet. Lily’s heart turned over. She saw Trayer at his mother’s right and noted his nasty, triumphant leer. But far worse was Lowdy’s face, ghost-white and set with fear. Lily lowered her bucket to the floor, slowly, fingers numb. Straightening, conscious of a feeling of imminent catastrophe, she drew in a deep breath and waited.

“You’re a bit late for dinner, aren’t you?” Mrs. Howe began, mildly enough.

But Lily wasn’t fooled. Her mind raced, searching for a way to leave Lowdy out of it. “Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry,” she blurted out in a rush. “I told Lowdy I was sick, but—then I—went for a walk. On the path. I’m feeling much better now.”

“Are you? I’m so glad. We’re all relieved, aren’t we?” The housekeeper glanced down the table at the others. Lily thought most of them looked extraordinarily uncomfortable. But a few smiled back at Mrs. Howe, as though sharing a joke, and one of the footmen licked his lips in anticipation. “If you went walking on the path,” she resumed, moving forward on a silent glide, “you must’ve found it hard to post your letters.”

“My—” Lily swallowed painfully; her heart began a rough, erratic pounding in her chest. “My letters?” From the corner of her eye, she saw that Lowdy was looking down at the table and had started to cry.

“Your letters, yes. The ones you left your work in order to mail. After you persuaded Lowdy to lie for you.”

“No, Lowdy didn’t know, I lied to
her
—”

“ ‘Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein; he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.’ “

“Please, Mrs. Howe, I swear, Lowdy didn’t know—”

“First a thief, now a liar. But nobody here is surprised. “The dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.’ “

Lily shuddered. It was useless to argue. She waited stoically for her punishment.

Howe lifted a heavy arm and pointed toward the wide brick hearth across the room. “Go and kneel there, wicked girl. You’ll stay on your knees all night on the cold stone, with no dinner and no supper. In the morning, you’ll drink a cup of vinegar to scour your lying tongue. And then you’ll—”

“You must be out of your mind. I’ll do no such thing.” Lily hadn’t thought the deathlike silence in the hall could intensify, but it did. And suddenly she couldn’t stop her tongue, in spite of the prickle of perspiration on her palms and the shiver of panic across her shoulder blades. “What I did was wrong, but I don’t deserve this.” She thrust a hand toward the stone hearth. “I’m sorry I lied. I needed to post some letters, and I knew you wouldn’t let me. I’m all of twenty minutes late, and I’ll make it up tonight after my other chores are done.” She stood straighter and strove to conquer the tremor in her voice. “But I won’t kneel all night on that hearth, and I certainly won’t—” she heard a hysterical laugh bubbling up in her throat—“drink
vinegar
tomorrow to satisfy some vicious, barbaric—”

Intent on her argument, she didn’t see the wide palm flying toward her until a half-instant before the impact. She cried out, in surprise as much as pain, and clutched at her stinging jaw. Afterward, she would try to recall the thoughts that passed through her mind in the seconds that followed, but nothing would focus except stunning, red-hot rage. Obeying a reflex as involuntary as breathing, she brought her own hand back and smacked Mrs. Howe across the face as hard as she could.

It was as if a cannon had exploded in an empty field, so loud was the blow, so complete the stillness in the room in its aftermath. A mist of gray dots clouding Lily’s vision gradually disappeared, and in the new clarity she saw Mrs. Howe’s face change subtly from shock to exultation. Lily waited, filled with profound dread.

Howe’s thickset body seemed to get bigger, swelling and expanding, darkening the room. “Go upstairs,” she intoned softly, almost sweetly. “Wait for me in your room, with meekness and fortitude. For though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, and bathed in the blood o’ the Lamb.”

Lily stood still, fighting her fear, groping for courage somewhere in the waves of pure hate that were drenching her. She said one word—
“Monster”
—in a hissing whisper meant only for Howe’s ears. Looking at no one, she turned and fled.

The moon beaming in the window was full, and so bright she could have read a book in her little room without a candle. But she had no book, no letter to write and no mending, nothing but her own thoughts to keep her company while she waited. She didn’t think about Mrs. Howe’s “punishment,” although she did not doubt that, whatever it was, it would be exceedingly unpleasant. Instead she was tormented by images of the past and the future, and her normally resilient spirits were lifeless and heavy from an unfamiliar feeling of regret. Her father’s death had been a tragedy, but she’d learned to accept it and carry on with her life in the dark, straitened aftermath. No one avoided catastrophes forever; when they occurred, one did one’s best to live through them and come out whole and hopeful on the other side. But the things that had begun happening to her life two months ago did not seem natural to Lily. They were beyond the realm of her experience, at odds with her expectations. Roger Soames was at the heart of her troubles, but his obsessions were out of her control. Nothing she could have done, short of total capitulation, could have changed the outcome of their last encounter.

In the same way, Mrs. Howe’s enmity was frightening and inexplicable, a powerful mystery; standing in its violent path, Lily felt completely helpless. Nothing made sense anymore; nothing was orderly. Actions had no relation to consequences. She’d lived her life with a barely conscious conviction that she had a hand in her own fate, but that consolation no longer existed. Complacency was gone. Survival, which had once been a given, was now a contingency.

Where Devon Darkwell fit into this new philosophy, she couldn’t say. She would be glad to leave him, glad never to see him again. He had given her very little except pain and anguish, hurt and humiliation. And yet, incredibly, she didn’t hate him. When she thought of him, before her mind had a chance to throw up its thick bulwark of defenses, sometimes a deep, exquisite joy assaulted her, made up as much of pain as pleasure, and so strong it could make her lightheaded. She would be
happy
to leave him, and yet his—companionship, if it wasn’t too much of a joke to call it that, had been the only bright spot in all of the long, dreary weeks she’d been at Darkstone. Odder still, and most distressing of all, was the knowledge that she would never forget him: she would take his dark, provocative, frustrating memory to her grave.

She heard a step on the stair. It’s Lowdy, she told herself, for it seemed as if hours had passed; surely it was almost bedtime. But no—now she heard a second set of footsteps, and a moment later she saw a flicker of light under the crack in the door. Lowdy would have no candle.