With This Curse: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense (6 page)

“I was working one of the cutting machines,” she said offhandedly. “I couldn’t see so well as I used to sewing, so they moved me to cutting. It wasn’t but a moment that I looked away—but it was enough.” She pulled her glove back on, dropping her eyes.

“They couldn’t find anything for you to do after that?”

She shrugged. “Oh, they set me to sweeping up for a time, but it didn’t pay enough to keep body and soul together.”

“Then how do you manage?” As soon as the words left my mouth I longed to call them back, for Martha merely smiled—a ghastly, humorless smile—and I felt my face burning with shame at my clumsy naiveté. “Here,” I told her, fumbling in my purse for the few coins I had with me. “Take this. Buy yourself a hot meal—or a warm cloak if there’s enough.”

“I don’t want your money,” she said roughly.

“Please take it. For old friendship’s sake, Martha.”

For a moment I thought she would refuse again. Then her hand—her left hand—closed around the coins, and she favored me with a grin. The gap left by her missing tooth gave it a grotesque quality. “Right you are,” she said cheerfully. “But it’s gin I’ll be buying with your charity—if it please your ladyship.”

A mocking curtsey was her farewell. Struck dumb, I could only watch as she sauntered across the street toward the alehouse, where the men welcomed her so warmly that I gathered they were already acquainted. In a moment she had vanished inside the dim interior.

I turned so quickly that I almost collided with someone behind me, and at a pace that was almost a run I made my way home, with Martha’s worn, rouged face and marred grin hovering before my eyes at every step.

Atlas accepted my invitation to call on me the following afternoon. My landlady was kind enough to provide us with tea, bread and butter, and the use of the front parlor. After bringing in the tray she retreated to an armchair at the other side of the room with her knitting, close enough to keep us in view but distant enough that our conversation would have a certain degree of privacy.

“I see we have a chaperone,” Atlas observed as I poured out the tea.

“So much in our acquaintance is unconventional, and likely to become more so,” I said, handing him his cup and saucer, “that I hope you’ll indulge me by observing a few of the conventions.” It was still a bit difficult to look at him directly, so striking was his resemblance to Richard, but I was trying to accustom myself to him. In the clear sunlight shining into the parlor that afternoon, his handsomeness was all the more vivid; I had seen my landlady herself, a prim virgin of some sixty summers, widen her eyes and grow pink in the face when the tweeny first ushered him into the parlor.

It was odd for me to think of Atlas—Atticus, rather—as handsome. True, the resemblance between him and Richard had always been there, but where Richard always seemed dazzling, his brother seemed dull; lacking Richard’s gifts of charm, athleticism, and confidence, Atticus had been in comparison slight from lack of exercise, pale from time spent indoors over his books, shy and stammering and anxious. It was that air of earnestness that had earned him his nickname. Richard said laughingly that his brother looked as worried as if he carried the weight of the world on his insufficient shoulders, and Atlas he became.

It had not struck me as cruel at the time, but now I shifted uncomfortably in my chair at the recollection and hoped that Atticus had not heard about the jest.

“You look ill at ease, Mrs. Graves,” he commented, as if reading my thoughts. “Is something troubling you?”

Why, yes, in fact: being put to the extremity of marrying you.
“I was just reflecting on how much you’ve changed since I left Gravesend,” I said.

That brought a surprised lift of his eyebrows. The sunlight streaming through the window picked out red glints in his chestnut hair and brows, and the contrast with his startlingly pale blue eyes was arresting. “I can’t say I’m aware of it.”

“If you’ll forgive me for mentioning it, it seems you no longer wear a brace.”

“I was able to cast that aside by the time I turned sixteen.”

“Oh. I hadn’t realized.” That would have been well before I was turned out of the house, as he and Richard had been my elders by some two years, and I was embarrassed that I had not even been aware of the change.

“Well, our activities didn’t bring us much into each other’s sphere,” he said. “I’m not surprised you did not observe every detail of my toilette.” His expressive mouth curved in a smile, which astonished me.

“You are able to find amusement in reflecting on the disadvantage to which your—your condition put you?” I could not keep myself from asking.

That brought a full-blown smile, and for a second it was as if I were sitting across from Richard, who was so often smiling or laughing in my memory. The impression robbed me of breath. I dropped my gaze to my cup and saucer as I fought for control over my emotions, and he said, “I discovered some time ago that if I couldn’t laugh at myself, every burden that life handed me would be all the heavier.”

This made my thoughts turn again to the uncomfortable memory of his nickname, so I said, “I hadn’t remembered you and Richard as being so similar, that’s all.”

“I see. Well, it’s true that when we were children Richard and I were easily distinguished. I think I closed that gap as I grew older. Once the head groom began training me in bare-knuckle fighting, I put on a bit of muscle and became able to borrow my brother’s clothing.” Then he stopped abruptly. “Forgive me, this must be painful for you. I’ve been tactless.”

“No, it’s I who brought up the subject of your brother. But I mustn’t waste any more of your time. I asked you here to discuss your offer.”

He nodded and waited for me to go on. He seemed remarkably at ease; his broad shoulders—definitely broader than I recalled—were relaxed and did not disarrange the lines of his grey wool sack jacket. His fine-boned hands held cup and saucer without fidgeting or self-consciousness. This, in short, was an Atticus I did not seem to know after all.

“If I’m to accept you,” I said, “there are some areas of concern that I’d like to discuss.”

“Naturally,” he said politely, but interest had quickened in his eyes. To avoid that penetrating gaze I turned to the teapot and refilled my cup.

“First among these is my lack of plausibility as a member of your class, or indeed a sufficiently elevated position to marry into the Telford line.”

He shook his head. “My dear Cl—Mrs. Graves, as far as your bearing and speech are concerned, you’ll move freely among my circles without detection. As a matter of fact, if you’ll forgive me, I’m curious as to how you came to speak so little like a servant.”

“My mother’s doing,” I said, my throat suddenly tightening as I remembered her intent, serious face as she tirelessly corrected my pronunciation and vocabulary. So much patient effort, and all for naught—or so I had thought up to now. “I believe she wanted me to retain as much gentility as she could pass on to me.”

“A thoughtful and most maternal impulse.”

“A burden and a curse,” I snapped before I could stop myself. The other servants had thought me pretentious and stuck-up, and they had made a point of treating me with exaggerated deference. “It made it much more difficult to get along with the other servants.”

“Ah, I can see how it would. They must have thought you were mocking them by speaking like your… I suppose they would have said ‘your betters.’ But now it’s most convenient.”

“Please tell me the truth,” I said. “Don’t spare my feelings. If there are small ways in which I reveal my origins, better to know them now and contrive some explanation.”

“That’s a wise precaution, Mrs. Graves. It seems I’m to have a wife who is clever in more ways than with her needle.” He saw that the pleasantry sat ill with me, however, and without comment moved back to the topic at issue. “If there are any small differences that occur in your speech, we may explain that with your time in America. The peculiarities of speech there have no doubt influenced your own.”

“And that’s another difficulty,” I said. “My past. We can scarcely acknowledge that I was a servant for your family, nor that I have been earning my keep as a seamstress with a traveling theatrical troupe.”

“A widow who traveled a great deal with her American husband,” he said promptly, making me wonder how much thought he had already given the matter. “A railway magnate, shall we say? They seem to proliferate in America. Apparently one can scarcely take two steps down any major thoroughfare without colliding with a captain of industry. They are a bigger nuisance than pigeons, I hear.”

I laughed before I could help myself, and his cup paused on its way to his lips.

“Your whole demeanor changes when you laugh,” he said thoughtfully. “I should like to see you smile more often… by which I mean at all.”

Discomfited, I stared down at my lap. “One certain way to prevent my doing so is to make me self-conscious about it.”

“My apologies. That was not my intention.”

“To return to the subject at hand,” I said, grasping after a less uncomfortable topic, “such a story may indeed allay suspicions when I betray my unfamiliarity with your social customs. But will there be anyone among your acquaintance who is familiar enough with American society to recognize that my story is false? That could be disastrous.”

He set down his cup and looked at me quizzically. “Mrs. Graves, I understood that you summoned me here with the idea to accept my proposition, yet you’ve put forth nothing but objections. Which of us are you trying to convince that marrying me is out of the question?”

The direct gaze of those piercing pale eyes was a challenge, and I summoned the fortitude to meet it, although I wished to avert my own eyes—to hide, were it possible.

“I do accept the offer,” I said. “It is only that—”

“I’m delighted to hear it.” The smile struck again, and I blinked; he seemed genuinely pleased, but why I could not fathom. “You have made me the happiest of men, my dear Clara. I may call you Clara?”

“I suppose, if you must. But—”

“Thank you, Clara.”

“You are welcome. But—”

“I hope you’ll call me Atticus.”

“If you insist.
But
,” I repeated, “it would be foolish not to examine every area where my imposture may be exposed.”

He considered this as he helped himself to more bread and butter. His appetite seemed to be improving now that he had his answer. I, on the other hand, felt some queasiness now that I had committed myself. “A very sensible attitude,” he declared. “I’m doubly fortunate in having won a wife as intelligent as she is lovely.”

I gave him an even look. “Do you have many such pretty compliments memorized for this occasion, or shall I be spared further sallies? I’m well aware that I am not your first choice… or, indeed, any man’s.” Any man since Richard.

The blue eyes and warm, resonant voice were all innocent concern. “Clara, the furthest thing from my mind is to injure you. I meant what I said. But if it makes you uncomfortable for me to voice such sentiments…”

“Thank you for your understanding.”

“…then I shall have to accustom you to accepting compliments.”

Exasperated, I directed at him a look that no prospective bride should level upon her intended husband. “Must you make light of my feelings? I don’t think it unreasonable of me to expect some consideration from my… from you.”

That sobered him. Before I knew what he was about, he had reached across the table and taken my hand in a firm clasp. “Clara,” he said in a different voice—a voice pitched so that my landlady would not hear, “if I seem flippant, it’s merely that you’ve made me very happy. I’m delighted that you’ll be returning to Gravesend with me and that I may offer you—I don’t think I’m boasting to say it—a far pleasanter life than what you’ve been forced to endure to this point.”

He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it before I knew what he was about, and this surprised me into forgetting the rejoinder that had been poised on my lips. It was the first gesture of tenderness that anyone had shown me in… how long? The light pleasant impression of his lips seemed to have been imprinted upon my skin, and I was aware of it still as he continued, “I intend to quash all of your doubts and convince you that you’ve made the right decision.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said, coming back to myself. “But permit me to ask something. You’ve spoken of your wish to make your father’s final days easier by presenting him with a wife. You have been good enough to say that you want to make amends to me for being turned out—something that was not of your doing.” Or could it be that he really was culpable, but in a way I was not aware of? That was a thought worth contemplating more at another time. “What is it that you yourself gain from this scheme?”

“I’m anticipating a great deal of pleasure from being a sort of Father Christmas to you. And I regard you highly. I know that I shall enjoy your company and that your presence will make Gravesend a far more cheerful place.”

“And that is all?” My skepticism was plain in my voice.

At first I thought he would turn the question away with a glib pleasantry. Then he seemed to reconsider. In repose, without the smile, his face was surprisingly stern: the sharp, strong line of his jaw lent a grim cast to his expression, and with his eyes fixed on the distance I realized how much older they looked when he wasn’t merry. Not just older… sadder, perhaps. Or wiser.

“Masculine pride is a terrible thing, Clara. Knowing that wherever I go in society people are thinking, ‘Ah, there’s the Blackwood cripple who couldn’t get a bride…’” He drew a hand down over his face as if to wipe away the grimness and favored me with a wry twist of his mouth that was not a smile. “I do not wish to have married any of the empty-headed misses I’ve met in society. But it’s nonetheless a rather jarring feeling to know that they are even more grateful not to have been forced to marry me.”

“But you are not a cripple,” I said. It was the only point on which I felt I could offer him any reassurance. “You scarcely even have a limp now, unless one looks for it.”

“It comes and goes. When I’m tired—or self-conscious under the stare of a passel of busybodies—it sometimes gives me trouble. But you’re right, of course; I don’t think of myself that way. I just see it so often in the eyes of people I’m speaking to.” Abruptly he said in a different voice, “That is quite enough about me and my motives, I think. In any case, one must leave something to come as a surprise.”

“I dislike surprises,” I said. “In my experience, they are rarely pleasant. Perhaps you’d best warn me.”

“No, no; it will keep.” His brief grin made him suddenly look like an impudent schoolboy. “But we were speaking of your concerns, earlier. Your anxiety about being caught out as an impostor.”

Those had not been my words, but they captured my unease. “I do think there is a substantial risk.”

“There shall be far less of one once you have been kitted out with a new wardrobe.” His glance swept over my dress. “Anyone who might remember you as Clara the housemaid won’t connect you with her once you’ve changed those widow’s weeds for something more becoming to your new station. I hope it is agreeable to you, but I’ve made appointments for you tomorrow with three of the modistes that come most highly recommended. With all of them working on your new things at once, they should have you newly outfitted in short order, and I should like to return to Gravesend before the end of the month.”