The Loves of Leopold Singer (55 page)

He must not have known. He could never have kept something like this from her or from the world. But then, she had kept the truth about Obadiah from him.

The women’s eyes met, and then Marta really understood.
Persey doesn’t know
.

Marta felt a stab of tender pain, not for herself but for Susan. She couldn’t imagine watching Samuel or Harry or Eleanor grow up calling another woman “Mother.”

“Aunt?” Persey looked to Susan for some explanation for this strange woman’s insistent grasp. Aside from his golden hair, Persey was more like Leopold in physique and manner than any of Marta’s children. He had a kind aspect, and a sense of robust happiness floated about him. He seemed more easygoing than even Leopold had been at that age.

Unexpected, a surge of love welled up in her and pour out to Susan Gray and to Leopold’s son. She touched her brooch and said a silent blessing for them both.

“Your…aunt was looking for her book,” she said. She handed Susan the Wollstonecraft. She hadn’t felt such peace since the river had taken Leopold. “It is yours, I think?”

“Thank you. Yes, that one is mine.”

Susan Gray and Marta Schonreden hugged each other like long-separated sisters.

“What am I missing?” Persey retrieved his hat from Jane. “I swear I will not understand women as long as I live.” He brushed his hair back and replaced the hat, raising his eyebrows in wonder.

“God’s grace!” Marta stared at Persey.

Above Persey’s left eye was a gash of bare skin at the apex of the brow, as if the line of the brow were broken. This man, so obviously Leopold’s son, bore the same odd feature as Obadiah. It was a sign, a sign from the Queen of Heaven. Obadiah, after all, was Leopold’s child. The burden of the past, never completely put away, dissolved and was gone. Marta was clean again and whole.

“Mrs. Singer, here you are! You must come at once.” April Zehetner bounced into the room. “You won’t believe the news. Miss Fiddyment has at last accepted Mr. Grasmere!”

At the time Solomon Grasmere found his way to Laurelwood, a private carriage hired in London moved through Carleson Peak. Inside, a young woman with the look of a Hindu princess sat among a treasure trove of objects collected over two years of travel. A man rode beside the vehicle on horseback, hatless, his golden hair grown well past his shoulders. Slipped into the rifle sling on his saddle was an ash walking stick tipped with a silver dragon’s head.

The rider fixed his gaze on the oak at the mallards’ lake at Laurelwood. It was good to look upon things that never changed. The oak refused to give up its last leaf as it did every year, a stubborn act of faithlessness which he loved. He bent down and peered into the carriage. “It won’t be long.” The woman was unhealthily pale. She needed bed rest and a proper English doctor.

Like an ominous portent, a family of geese rose in seeming chaos, chattering and honking, formed its V and was gone. When he looked to the tree again, the last oak leaf was gone.

“No!” He spurred his mount at full speed for Laurelwood.

-oOo-

Wills’ letter was ash, white and delicate on the grate. The sight pierced Sara with melancholy. The cries of geese called her to the window, and she saw the oak’s newly bare branch, scratching like a black claw at the gray sky. Something between a whimper and a wail escaped her. She had to find that leaf. Her letter was gone. She had to have some thing to remember Wills by. A leaf pressed into a favorite volume could not be so wrong. She would be a good wife. She would give Geordie an heir and manage his household. Would the world deny her a leaf?

She ran out to the lake and to the tree where a strange man in exotic costume rummaged through the shrubbery. He saw her. And she knew him. She held back for what seemed forever, thinking of all that separated them. He held the leaf out to her, but she didn’t see the offering. She saw only his eyes and his outstretched hand. She went to him, into his arms.

When they kissed, she thought: These are the lips mine are supposed to taste, these are the arms where I am supposed to find strength, this is the soul that mirrors my soul.

“Then you forgive me, Sara,” Wills said. “I never thought you could, though I dreamed it. I hoped.”

But Sara drew back, astonished. She placed her hand over her heart, and her fingers worked the Voudon amulet that hung from her neck. This was all wrong, not at all like what she had felt in her fancy.

Here stood her fancy, now real. His arms were open to her, and it was no good.

Strange and uncontrolled laughter shook her frame. She was free. She looked at the oak’s bare branches and felt bombarded by surprising joy.

Wills smiled too. “I love you, Sara. I have always loved you. We’ll find a way—we must find a way to be together.”

“No.” She put some distance between them. She had to speak to make her new understanding real, both to Wills and for herself. “I cannot say I don’t love you. But I’m not like my mother. To gratify lust is not enough.” Let him be shocked that she thought of such things. It wasn’t her purpose to think of his feelings now. “I long for passion, but I require respect, friendship, correspondence. The wonder of it is, I have these things. Here, now, with Geordie.”

“You love me.” Wills managed to take hold of her hand. “That is my ring you wear. I chose it for you, and you won’t take it off.”

“Because my husband gave it to me,” she said softly, as if explaining an adult thing to a child. “I have loved you.” She withdrew her hand. “For a long, sad time. But from now on, I will not.”

He didn’t argue, didn’t plead. He said, “My mother says life doesn’t give us what we need, just because we need it. I understand her now.” He didn’t follow her, running careless as a schoolgirl back to her home.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Sara?” April was the first to see her. “Miss Fiddyment has at long last surrendered to the inevitable and accepted Mr. Grasmere.”

“Three cheers for the conquering hero.” Josef slapped Solomon Grasmere on the back. “Well done.”

Mrs. Singer stood outside the circle. She seemed emotional out of proportion to this news. “I’ve just seen someone.” She answered Sara’s inquiring look.

“Ah, I can guess,” Sara said. “Mrs. Peter’s nephew?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Singer squeezed her hand. “Her nephew.”

“I’m so glad. You were right,” Sara said, “about everything.” The burden of her guilt was gone, and she wasn’t alone. She was sorry for Mrs. Peter and for Wills and Aunt Philly and Jane, and she was sorry for herself. But it was bearable now, knowing she wasn’t the only person who’d ever been betrayed by passion. She would do what she could for Wills. Uncle James would know how to help him.

Uncle James!
She’d forgotten his letter. She slipped away and returned to the letter on her desk, postmarked two months ago. Uncle James was well, but her grandfather, the great Aristaeus Sande, was dead. Then she read further and burst out laughing. She had to find Geordie and tell him of this cosmic joke.

Geordie had returned from The Branch and was with the others in the parlor, wishing joy to Miss Fiddyment and Solomon Grasmere. He had only just met her friends and readily liked them. He was sincerely glad for their happiness, but she could see something was wrong.

When he saw her, he brightened slightly. “I’m glad to see you, my dear. I don’t know where to begin with all I have to tell you. Poor Philomela has died.”

“I’m so sorry.” Sara looked at Uncle James’s letter in her hand. What would Aunt Philly have thought of its contents?

“I don’t think you understand, dear Sara,” Geordie said. “You are now Baroness Branch.”

“To Lady Branch.” Wills raised a glass, and the others followed suit. What was he doing her?

“That’s the other thing,” Geordie said. “I found Wills on the road coming back from The Branch. Isn’t it wonderful? But his wife is unwell. She’s lying down, and I’ve sent for Mr. Brennan.”

“Your wife?” This was a day for revelations.

“She’ll be fine once she’s rested,” Wills said.

How had she ever loved him? Her heart went out to his bride. She said, “Ordinarily, the fact that I am a baroness would be astounding enough. But I have heard of something that will shock everyone here, I’m sure.” She smiled at Wills. He had no hold on her. Uncle James’s news had released her from all concern on his account. She read:

Your grandfather and my brother, Aristaeus Sande, is dead. He has
willed
his entire fortune, a massive amount which I will not catalog here, to his grandson, William Philo George Asher, of Laurelwood.

After a long stunned silence, Geordie said, “I don’t understand it, but I’m delighted for you, Wills.”

Geordie
was
delighted for his brother, sincerely. His pleasure produced an overflowing sense of gratitude in Sara. And she’d nearly ruined everything. Now it was good to give Geordie this: “Forgive me, Mr. Carleson, for informing you in the presence of these people. But they are such good friends, and it seems this is a day for news. I am expecting a joyful event.”

“Oh, my darling!” His arms enfolded her, and she knew she’d be safe and loved all the days of her life.

-oOo-

Marta slipped away from the young people to return to the miracle in the kitchen.

“He’s gone,” Susan said.

“Oh.” Marta stood in the doorway, unable to go or stay.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Susan poured steaming water from George Grim’s brass teakettle into a red and white Queensware pot. Marta had brought the kettle as a present for Sara, who had admired the thing.

“That would be lovely.”

The women sat across from each other at the end of the worktable. At the other end, Mrs. Johns had left the covered bread dough to rise with its moist, yeasty smell. They were alone in the room in the darkening late afternoon, quiet but for the crackle of the fire and the rumble of thunder.

The cutwork of the kettle glimmered in the firelight. Marta thought of George Grim’s lust, so ugly. Yet he had produced that beautiful object. Did Leopold feel lust for this woman once, and from it produce the beautiful Persey?

“I should never have married Matthew Peter,” Susan said, “though he was a good man and he loved me. I never loved him as I should have, as I could have. Persey has been everything to me. More than I ever deserved.”
 

Could it have been love Leopold felt for Susan? Marta found she wanted it to be love. She heard her mother’s voice call out from the long-buried past: Who does she think she is to put a claim on Leopold? The voice was ugly and wrong. How much Marta had suffered, how much life she had missed because she had listened to that voice, cold and loveless. A life spent believing she was unworthy of love, robbed of so much time, time she could have spent loving.

“He seems a wonderful young man,” she said, and her voice echoed Leopold’s at its gentlest and most magical. How could she explain that the very existence of Susan’s son had given her such liberating joy?

“Bi-kit.”

She lifted Jane onto her lap and kissed the forehead where Persey’s lips had been. Here was another who would not know her true father, one whom the world, if it had the chance, would call godforsaken. What did it matter if God turned away from such sweetness? The sweetness was there all the same, and the Queen of Heaven rejoiced in it. Of that Marta was certain.

“I think life is what matters,” she said.

“And love.” Susan gave Marta a cookie for Jane.

Marta grabbed Susan’s hand. “And loving.”

Leopold was gone, and she would always know she hadn’t loved him enough. Reverend Grim was gone, and she would have to live with the knowledge she could have, should have been kinder to him. Could she have another chance with Persey? She would do what she could for him, for his sake, for Leopold’s sake and for her own.

“Find work to do and people to love—that’s how to stay alive,” Marta said to herself more than to Susan, unaware she held the cookie just out of Jane’s reach.

Jane chortled as if Marta had made a good joke. “My bi-ket.” The child stretched forth her hand.

-oOo-

O

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The Loves of Leopold Singer