Lady in Waiting: A Novel (16 page)

“I totally love it,” she gushed. She floated over to the full-length mirror in her gauzy white strapless dress and pulled the necklace on over her head. It hung past her navel, just like I thought it would. She doubled the length, and the tassel-like pendant hung halfway down her chest. “It’s perfect. Where did you find it? Is it an antique?”

“I got it in Philly a couple months ago. It’s Edwardian.”

“Okay. What does that mean?”

“King Edward was the son of Queen Victoria, so we’re talking turn of the century.”

“So, that’s like, a hundred years old!” Her eyes widened. “Does that mean I have to keep it in a box?”

“No. I want you to wear it.”

She grinned, cinched the second loop around her neck, and grabbed the pendant, swinging it around like a flapper in the roaring twenties. “I love it, doll!”

“I thought you would.”

Leslie struck a pose in front of the mirror. “You should wear that ring
at the party tonight. People will ask about it, and then you can tell them it’s from the Dark Ages, and all of Mom and Dad’s friends will start gasping for air and peppering them with questions about why on earth you are wearing it.”

I laughed. “Not exactly the Dark Ages, Les. And I really don’t know if I should keep wearing it. I don’t even know if I should keep it.”

“Of course you should keep it! It has your name on it!”

“That doesn’t make it mine.”

She walked over and stretched out on the bed next to me. “You bought it, Jane. That makes it yours.”

“Well, I bought some books, and it just happened to be hidden inside one of them.”

“So?”

“I paid one hundred pounds for the books and dishes, and the ring is worth seven
thousand
dollars.”

“Six. David said six.”

“I think if the person whom Emma bought it from had the prayer book in their family, then—”

Leslie sat up on the bed. “No, Jane. Don’t even go there. They sold that book fair and square. The book is obviously ancient, and they sold it anyway. That’s how much they care about old things. Don’t you even think of offering that ring back to them. I’ll never speak to you again if you do.”

“Such nasty words from a birthday girl.”

“I’m serious!” But she was smiling.

I took the black box out of my purse and opened it. The ring glinted a hello to me. “I would like to try to find out whose it was, though.”

“That is something I will let you do. But you can’t just give it back. To anybody. I think you should keep it anyway. For heaven’s sake, your name is in it! Don’t you think that’s just a bit more than coincidental?”

“Maybe,” I murmured. “I wonder … I wonder what happened to this Jane. I wonder why she never wore the ring. I wonder if she didn’t love the man who gave it to her.”

Leslie hesitated for a moment. Then she took the ring from out of the box and slipped it on her little finger. “I bet she loved him madly, whoever he was. But he died of the plague the day before they were to wed. And she was so brokenhearted she became a nun and sealed the ring in the prayer book and never loved again!”

“It’s a Protestant prayer book, Les.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So what’s the likelihood she became a nun?”

“Whatever. She loved him. And he loved her.”

“Think so?”

“Yes. I think they loved each other. Something they couldn’t control came between them. If they had had their way, they would’ve been married and the inscription would have been worn to unintelligible gobbledygook by now. And actually, you wouldn’t even know about this ring because this Jane died with it on her finger, having never taken it off. And she was old and arthritic after being married for sixty years, and no one could get it past the first knuckle.” She handed the ring back to me. “They loved each other.”

I held the ring in my palm for a few seconds before I put it back on my finger. We were both quiet. “Why do you think Brad left me, Les?” I asked a moment later.

She slid an arm around me. “Jane. The only reasons that matter are Brad’s reasons. It doesn’t matter why I think he left. It doesn’t even matter why you think he left. You may not like his reasons, but you’re going to have to make sense of them if the two of you are going to figure this out.”

I leaned into her. “I … I just feel so … lost. Like I’m disconnected from everything that matters to me. I can’t believe he’s gone, Les. I miss the
way his hospital clothes smell. I miss reading the Sunday paper with him. I miss making him dinner. I miss his stupid worms in the fridge. I miss … his nearness.”

Leslie squeezed my arm. “I know you do.”

“And I can’t help thinking that … it just feels like …” A tear slipped down my cheek. I wiped it away with the back of my hand. “Like there’s another woman. Like there
should
be another woman. But there isn’t. He says there isn’t. Sometimes I wish there was.”

“No, you don’t,” Leslie said quickly, rubbing my shoulder. “You don’t wish that.”

“I would understand it then.”

“No. You would have someone to hate then. And wouldn’t it be nice to heap all this negative energy onto someone you’d find easy to hate? C’mon, Jane. You don’t want that.”

The angry seed of a headache was forming at my temples. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t adore him so much if he were having an affair, you know. It would sure bring him down a couple pegs. They think it’s my fault Brad’s in New Hampshire. That I kicked him out or something. Or maybe they think I’m the one having an affair.”

“This is none of their business unless you let them have at it. And why are we even talking about this? All this serious talk is messing up my birthday. Let’s go poke our fingers into the roses on my cake.”

She stood.

I reached over to turn off the light on the bedside table, and a strange sensation of loss and loneliness fell over me as the rings on my hand sparkled under the glow of the lamp: long-ago Jane’s betrothal ring and my own wedding band and engagement ring.

“You go ahead. I’ll just be a minute,” I said.

Leslie hesitated. “All right. Don’t be long. Mom will ask about you. And then she will come up.”

She turned and left me, closing the door behind her.

I sat there for several long moments massaging an infant headache away. I wanted to talk to Brad. I wanted to hear his voice, hear him say my name. I wanted him to offer me a strand of hope, however thin, that I was someone he still loved.

I reached into my purse and pulled out my cell phone. It was a little after six thirty in the evening, and the track meet should’ve been over. Perhaps Brad and Connor were grabbing a bite to eat. Maybe Brad was already on his way back to Manchester. My fingers trembled as I clicked through the contacts and landed on Brad’s name. I pressed the button to dial, my heart thumping in my chest. I had no idea what I was going say to him. I just wanted to hear his voice.

The call went to his voice mail. In a tangled, distant way, I got my wish. I heard his voice.
“Hi. You’ve reached Brad Lindsay. I can’t take your call at the moment, but please leave a message for me, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

My mind stumbled over the words, “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,” which I had heard dozens of times before when I’d left voice messages for my husband, but it meant something different that day. I could barely form words. For the first few seconds after the beep, I said nothing. Then I launched into a rambling message.

“Hey, it’s me. I just wanted to … Well, I was thinking the track meet might be over, and um, I was just getting ready to go downstairs and help Mom with the last preparations for the party, and I just …”

My voice broke away, and a thick, hot lump swelled inside my throat. I struggled to continue. “I’m … I’m … I have no idea what I am trying to say. I just … I just really miss you today, Brad. I’m sorry if that’s not something you want to hear. I just had to say it. Um. Okay. I guess we’ll talk later. Bye.”

I pressed the button to end the call, and my face was hot with embarrassment.
I wished there was a way to erase what I had said. I was about to call him back and apologize when I decided to call Connor instead. Maybe Brad was with him, and I could just tell Brad about the message I left and convince him to erase it.

Connor answered on the third ring.

“Hey, Mom.” He sounded tired.

“Hey!” I faked a happy greeting. “How did it go today?”

“Not bad. I broke my personal record on the four hundred. Wasn’t enough to win it. But I was happy. Coach was happy.”

“That’s great, honey. I am really happy for you. I wish I could’ve been there.”

“Maybe you can come up next weekend. It’s a home meet.”

I sensed the anticipation in his voice. He wanted me to come. “I’d really like that. I’ll see if I can make that work.”

“Good.”

“Is … is Dad still with you?”

“He left about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Is he headed back to Manchester, then?”

“Well, I guess. That’s where he’s living, right?”

There was a slight sarcastic edge to Connor’s voice.

“Well, I’ll just wait until he calls me back. I’ve already left a voice mail for him.”

“Why? What for?”

Now Connor’s tone was clipped.

“I beg your pardon?”

“What did you want to talk to him about?”

“Well, Connor, that’s kind of between Dad and me.” Connor had never spoken to me like that before. He sounded perturbed.

“So you guys are finally going to talk?”

“What?”

“I said, so you guys are finally going to talk?”

“I heard what you said. I really don’t know, Connor. I am taking my cues from your dad right now. He wanted space. That’s what I am trying to give him.”

Connor was quiet. I wanted to see his face. I wanted to know what he was thinking. I had always been able to tell before. When he was little, when he was still at home, I knew how to read him. Always. When he was hurt or angry or frustrated or afraid, I could always tell. He wouldn’t say anything, but I could tell, and I would ask him what was bothering him, and he would tell me, and there’d be quiet relief in his voice that I had asked. But he was silent now and two hundred miles away from me. I didn’t know what he was thinking.

“What is it you want me to do, Connor?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

It scared me how much I wanted my college-age son to tell me what to do. Realization washed over me like a rogue wave. Molly was right. Jonah Kirtland was right. I didn’t want to make my own decisions. Or I didn’t know how. Or I simply didn’t have the courage to try.

My son said nothing for several seconds. When he finally spoke, he sounded older than his twenty years, like he knew the answer to my question but would not share it with me. “The team bus is ready to leave, Mom. I need to go.”

Regret enveloped me.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to dump that question on you, Connor. Really, I’m sorry.”

“Okay.”

“I really will try to come next weekend. I promise.”

“All right.”

We said good-bye, and I reminded him that I loved him. I ended the
call and stared at my phone, willing the screen to light up with an incoming call from Brad. I was still holding the silent phone in my hand when my mother opened the bedroom door and told me the party had begun and people were wondering where I was.

O
ur coach pulled into the quiet serenity of Bradgate just as the sun slipped into a hedgerow of summer clouds and approaching mist.

As we exited the coaches, the lot of us—from the marquess himself to the footman, whose name I did not know—breathed in great gulps of air, expelling the disease-tainted air of London lingering in our lungs. There was the unspoken hope among us all that we had not waited too long to leave the city where the sweating sickness was snatching souls left and right.

Were the decision mine, I would have retired with my family to the country long before then. The sickness had but one indiscriminate mercy. Sometimes it was quick. There were those who awoke with it in the morning and were dead of it by evening, burned by fever, run through with nausea and so pained with agonies in the head that they wished for death and were granted it.