“No,” Evan said, and looked beyond him to the doorway. “Where’s Marian?”
“Suit yourself,” Pemberly said as he poured himself a small glass of scotch from a crystal decanter.
“Where’s Marian?”
Pemberly downed the drink and poured himself another, even larger glass. “Are you sure I can’t fix you up?”
Fear knocked within Evan’s ribcage. “Stop evading my question. Where is Marian?”
“She doesn’t want to see you.”
Evan’s fear lessened. “Go and tell her she must see me. Tell her – tell her it will be all right, if she will just talk to me – ”
“I can’t do that,” Pemberly said as he stared into the depths of his glass.
“And why not?” Evan demanded.
“Because she’s not here.”
Evan froze in his seat.
His lips did not want to move, but he made them anyway. “Where is she?”
Pemberly took another huge swig. “If the winds are with her, quite possibly on a ship to France. She left at dawn for the docks.”
Terror filled Evan’s every limb. It felt as though ice had formed throughout his body, rooting him to the spot.
“…you are joking,” he finally choked out.
“Unfortunately, I am not.”
“You let her go?!” Evan cried out, bolting to his feet.
Pemberly looked up at him, a scowl on his face. “From what she said, it was
you
who let her go.”
“I did not tell her to go to France!” Evan shouted.
“You might as well have,” Pemberly muttered.
“She can’t get to Paris on fifteen pounds!”
“Of course she can, and with a great deal to spare. Not everyone is accustomed to the extravagances of our modes of travel.”
“Well – she certainly can’t
live
in Paris! Not on that amount!”
“Of course she can. As I said – ”
“Not for long! Not in anything but misery and poverty!”
Pemberly sighed. “I know. That is why I gave her ten more pounds, and directed her to see the Paris branch of my banker when she arrives for the equivalent of seventy-five more.”
Evan could not believe what he had just heard.
“…what?
“I increased the advance, you might say.”
Evan sank weakly back into his chair. “You have to be joking.”
“I also gave her the name of a publisher I know in Paris – an old friend, actually the fellow who inspired me to try my hand at the game. Her works will sell well in France, of that I have no doubt. I told him in the letter of introduction that I’ll send him the first English edition within a month.”
Evan sat there in utter horror, unable to speak. Finally he choked out one single word:
“…why?”
“Do you really I did not argue your case? I asked her to stay. I begged her to stay. I told her she could live here as long as she wanted. I told her that it was a lovers’ quarrel, that she should not set so much store by it, that she should give herself time to think it over, that she was acting rashly and would regret anything she did in haste.
“Do you know what she said? ‘I shall be in Paris within a week, with your aid or without it.’ I did not think you would want me to abandon her to the wolves, so I did my best to help her.”
“Damn you!” Evan shouted, springing to his feet again.
“What was I supposed to do, keep her here by force?” Pemberly scoffed. “Put her under lock and key?”
“You know I love her! You had no right!”
“You have no right to keep her here just to break her heart.”
The words cut like a cold knife into Evan’s chest. He had to put his hand on the chair to steady himself.
“I never meant to hurt her.”
“No, of course not – but it happened anyway.”
“She has these unreasonable ideas in her head – which you have now encouraged!” Evan railed.
“Were you going to marry her?”
Evan could not bring himself to answer.
Pemberly shrugged. “Then what does it matter?”
“It matters to me! It matters the world to me!”
“I doubt that, or you would have come here with a ring in your pocket.”
“What, you too?! Did she infect you with her madness, as well?!”
“Ah – so, you wanted one last roll in the sheets before she left, is that it?”
“Damn you and your lies! You know that is not true!”
“No, damn you and your selfishness!” Pemberly roared. “You break her heart, and all you are concerned with is your own unhappiness!”
“You dare speak to me thus?! You, with your thousand whores?!”
“You seem to have forgotten your own past, sir!” Pemberly snapped. “Let me remind you, then: I pay them, I treat them well, and I never promise anything beyond one night’s wages.”
“I never promised Marian anything!”
“No, you just let her believe whatever it was that she wanted.”
“YOU were the one who urged me onward! If I am cruel, then what portion of the responsibility do you take upon yourself?”
“You mistake me. I do not believe you to be cruel for bedding her…”
Pemberly paused.
“…for
loving
her. You are cruel to demand she stay with you when it is quite clear you offer her nothing but heartache in return.”
“You know I cannot marry her!”
“Well, of course.”
“Then why did you send her off to France?!”
Pemberly laughed bitterly. “Because I know you cannot marry her!”
Evan paced back and forth across the room. “She’s not thinking clearly – and you muddied the waters even more – ”
“No, it’s
you
who’s not thinking clearly. You want to convince her to stay here so you can continue to have your cake and eat it too. When you’re ready, you’ll give her up and find a nice little lady of proper breeding to wed. Are you really that cruel? To shackle her to you for your own pleasure, then set her free when you’ve had your fill?”
“I love her!” Evan cried out. “My heart is breaking!”
“And so is hers. Let her go and mend it. And pray God, do not break it again.”
His face full of pain and fury, Evan walked toward the doors to the drawing room.
“Where are you going?” Pemberly called over his shoulder.
“To the docks. I may have a chance to stop her yet.”
“I doubt it, but you can use my carriage, if you like.”
“YOU have done enough today, old
friend
,” Evan hissed before he burst out of the room.
Pemberly drank the last of his scotch, then poured himself another.
“No, not enough,” he said as he stared sadly into the distance. “Not nearly enough, I fear.”
Marian stood on the bow of the ship and stared at the Thames through tear-filled eyes.
She had found passage almost immediately, a small merchant’s vessel. The captain had told her that if the good weather and prevailing winds held, they would make landfall in Calais by nightfall.
Behind her in the distance, London faded from view. And with it her old life…
…her old love.
In the distance was Paris, the city of her dreams since she was a little girl.
Perhaps her heart would heal there, in time.
Perhaps.
Evan never found Marian on the docks that day. The sailors on the waterfront told him of a beautiful young woman who had gone up and down searching for passage to Calais. Apparently she had found it, for they had seen no more of her.
Evan considered finding a ship himself, but words from his last exchange with Pemberly echoed in his ears:
My heart is breaking!
And so is hers. Let her go and mend it. And pray God, do not break it again.
In the end, he returned to his quarters, packed his bags, and returned to Blakewood a broken man.
Andrew returned a week later. Neither of them spoke to one another.
A year passed.
Evan spent it largely in a drunken haze, alone in the deserted east wing of the mansion, his only company a bottle of liquor. He became a ghost, disappearing during the day, moving about at odd hours of the night, seldom seen, rarely speaking or spoken to.
Sometimes he would take his horse and ride the grounds, leaving at dawn and returning at nightfall. On these trips he would often visit the pond and gaze at it, though he never dismounted or swam in its waters.
He did not take his dinners with Andrew or their father. After a week of complaining, Lord Blake gave up and ignored his absence.
The only exception to this routine was when a package would come from London every other month.
Pemberly sent a printed edition of every work he published of Marian’s. Evan insisted that if he was sleeping when the post arrived, the servants must wake him. If the book came while he was out riding, a servant must inform him as soon as he entered the house. Then he would retire to the east wing with a bottle of scotch – and a lamp if it was night – and read the book cover to cover.
‘
La Parisienne
’
became an overnight success – if not exactly a literary sensation, then a publishing sensation. Her first novel was banned outright, and as a result sold a thousand copies within its first month. It was already in its fifth printing when ‘A Gentleman Of London’ appeared and sold twice as many in the same period of time. Within a year, her novels were bought from behind the counters of booksellers, vilified by the Church, banned by the censors,
tut-tutted
by elderly matrons of utmost respectability, and read by almost everyone else. Copies were smuggled into boarding schools where they sold for five times their normal asking price. Dogeared editions were passed amongst young mothers and servants and women too poor to afford copies of their own. The books could occasionally be found tucked away in the furthest recesses of the private libraries of the rich, or perhaps locked in a bottom drawer within a stately desk.
Evan devoured them, often rereading them twice or three times as soon as they arrived. Part of the reason was that they were quite good, and well-written for popular entertainment – especially for works of ‘vile pornography,’ as the village rector put it. The scenes of passion were heated and intense, but with emotions absent from other books of their kind. And the qualities and words of the characters fairly leapt off the page, enough so that they seemed more like real people rather than creations in a book.
The second reason was that they sounded so much like her. Her intonations, her choice of words, her wit, her forcefulness. He could hear her voice as the narrator of the stories, as clearly as though she were there reading them aloud.
But the final reason was that the books contained bits and fragments from their summer romance. Not the first stories; those were the novels she wrote before coming to Blakewood. But in the second year, she began to write scenes he recognized from their time together. The two lovers who first consummate their love by a lake, where the hero saves the heroine from a pair of brigands. A chance encounter in a dark garden at night. A trip to London, where the lovers steal away from the eyes of the world for a brief but passionate rendezvous.
And dialogue. She used scraps of conversations that he recognized immediately. Words he had said found their way into the mouths of the heroes, and the heroines spoke for Marian.
The books were a patchwork souvenir of his time with her, and they kept her memory alive within him.
But as much as they were a beautiful reminder, they were also a scourge that he used to beat himself.
In every dashing hero he saw himself; and in every scoundrel who disappointed or abused the heroine, he saw himself as well.
In every happy ending he saw the joy he might have had, if he had not ripped out the final pages from their own real-life story.
And he would drink and read, and drink and weep, and then go back and read the stories all over again.
Three months into Evan’s self-imposed exile from humanity, Andrew came and found him in the east wing.
“May I?” he asked tentatively, gesturing to a chair near Evan’s.
Evan looked at him with bleary eyes. He gestured as though to say,
Do what you will.
He read his own appearance in Andrew’s shocked face. Evan had not bathed for days; he had not touched a razor in weeks. Ever since London, he had gone from a smooth-shaven gentleman to a hairy man of the wilds, his appearance disheveled, his clothes stained, his breath reeking of alcohol.
Andrew sat uncomfortably in silence. Evan ignored him as he reread one of her books for the fifth time.
“I wanted to say… I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Evan asked, never looking up from the page. His voice was raspy from lack of use.
“For my deplorable behavior that night.”
Evan continued to read without any indication he had heard.
“Will you forgive me?” Andrew asked.
“There is nothing to forgive.”
“Obviously there is. There is a great deal to forgive, I fear.”
Evan looked up and stared into the distance. “Do you know what she said to me that night, after we had seen you in the street?”
It was Andrew’s turn not to answer. His face was shadowed with fear.
“I told her, ‘My brother meant to hurt me, not you. He was being cruel, and vicious – ’”
Andrew winced, but did not interrupt.
“‘And truthful,’ she said.”
He paused for a moment. When he finally looked at Andrew, there was no malice in Evan’s face.
“How can I be angry with you for telling her the truth?”
Then he bent back to his book.
“I
was
cruel, and vicious, and I hurt the both of you terribly – ” Andrew tried again.
“You did not hurt her one thousandth as much as I did.”
“Be that as it may, I destroyed the love that you shared – ”
“No, I did that quite ably myself. Actually, if I destroyed anyone’s love, it was hers for me; mine continues unabated, I fear.” He looked at Andrew again. “I should thank you on her behalf, for you revealed to her quite clearly the heartbreak in store for her if she stayed with me. You freed her from much suffering, so… I thank you. On her behalf.”
Andrew shook his head, his expression horrified. The man before him seemed half mad in his detachment. “How can you act like this? How can you not hate me for what I have done?”