Authors: Sophie Dash
The old man looked set to lead them through the house, until Isaac muttered, “I know the way.”
Dark wood panels, scowling portraits and rich furnishings lined the hallway. They were not welcoming, each one seeming to give judgement. A door was ahead, wide open, a rectangle of bright sunlight that had escaped the cloud cover. He could hear voices humming in the garden, sharp and unwelcome.
Isaac had been dreading this moment since the day he’d left, knowing he’d one day have to come back, face them and everything he had tried to leave behind.
Before he walked forwards onto the outside patio, a hand fell on his arm. The pressure, however light, stung the scrape that was still healing and had him grit his teeth.
“I – I am sorry – it’s only – hold still,” said Ruth, at his sudden intake of breath. She reached out, crossed the divide between them, and pulled a stray leaf from his hair. It was an awkward, unconscious action that he could tell she regretted the moment it was given.
For it was given, a gift, a small consideration between two people forced into an impossible situation.
“Thank you,” he said.
She only nodded, eyes averted until he proffered his arm, the uninjured one.
A heartbeat, an eternity, skimmed by until she took it.
The sun blinded them both at first and a stern voice said loudly, “
There
you are, Isaac. I couldn’t wait around indoors any longer. It’s far too stuffy. Now, come here.”
Unlike the building’s front, the back was more open, with a large terrace overlooking tidy, soulless grounds. Square hedges fenced in a wide, flat lawn. Pale statues stood to attention by trees that had been butchered into peculiar, symmetrical shapes. It was far different from what Isaac remembered, for now there were no flowers, no overgrown shrubs, no places to explore: it had no heart. Although it was lavish, it was exceedingly dull. A peacock’s shrill cry sounded in the distance – a white speck pecking at a topiary – an albino. Not even the birds had been left their colours.
“Isaac?”
He pulled his gaze from the scenery and to his great-aunt, who sat with poise on a garden chair, a plain parasol above her head. Her hair was snowy, her cheekbones high, her eyes sharp – she was a woman who could almost be ageless, a gracefully matured beauty, as striking as the day she was first presented to high society as a bright young thing.
“Let me look at you.” She took a deep breath. “You are not that gangly boy I saw all those years ago, are you?”
“It is a pleasure to see you too, Lady Mawes.”
“Is it?”
Isaac did not even try to lie.
“What on earth happened to your face? No, do not tell me, I can guess.”
“I fell off a horse,” said Isaac unconvincingly, sharing a furtive look with Ruth.
“It must have been a very tall horse. You have grown, haven’t you? You’re far stronger than you were, what a man ought to be.” The jibe was not aimed at anyone in particular, but Isaac felt his cousin’s stare at his back, heard his boots upon the flagstones.
“This is my wife,” said Isaac, finally recalling himself.
“I gathered that,” said Lady Mawes, as she pursed her lips. Isaac felt nervous. Not for himself, but for Ruth, as though she were an extension of him, as though they were the same being. “You will sit beside me, Mrs Roscoe,” added the old woman. “There is much to discuss. You needn’t bother with the others. You will come to know them soon enough, even if you wished you hadn’t.”
Ruth did as she was bid. Isaac found he wanted to grasp her, stop her, apologise for all he knew would take place though words were beyond use. What could he say that would ever be enough? She’d made it perfectly clear where they stood.
“Off you go, Isaac,” said Lady Mawes. “Leave us.”
Dismissed. He locked eyes with Ruth, who gave the slightest nod, and he left them to it.
A stone’s throw away, waiting for him, stood Colin. Their contrasts could not be more apparent. Colin was fair where Isaac was dark. There was a translucent quality to his skin and a reedy, uneven shape to him. Stomach a little too round, arms a little too thin, face a little too stretched.
They bypassed the normal greeting, favouring a stilted incline of the head. The man’s wife was nearby, a robust woman who gave him a disinterested smile over her fan, abandoned embroidery on her lap. Beside her was another woman who was equally cheerless: Colin’s sister Jemima. Unmarried and unlikely to ever be, she did not look up from her book.
“I had the gardens renovated,” said Colin, puffing his chest out.
Isaac kept his face in check as much as he could. “I can see that.”
“They are rather famous. Everyone comes to visit them. The Duke of Wellington’s cousin’s niece travelled down especially. She is a friend of Eliza’s.” He nodded to his wife, who did not even blink in acknowledgement.
“I liked it as it was.”
“I know,” replied Colin, with due satisfaction. “It was wild before. It lacked structure. Now it is a symbol. It is proof that man can overcome nature. Everything can be tamed, you see, in time.”
Everything can be broken
, he meant
.
“A pity about how you ended up with your wife, isn’t it? Such a shame upon the family. I am surprised our great-aunt allows you to visit.”
Isaac grew rigid, his question a challenge that told his cousin to use his next words carefully: “What do you mean?”
He had expected this jibe, but not so soon.
“There’s talk,” said Colin. “People say that she’s little better than a common whore who tricked you into—”
Isaac swung before he knew he had. The crack of his fist – colliding with Colin’s jaw – met his ears first. Then there was crashing crockery and an “oof” sound, before Isaac’s own actions caught up with his eyes and a throbbing ache settled into his already-bruised knuckles. Colin went down. A shrill cry and the man’s sister was at his side in an instant. Eliza, the wife, remained seated, though she did crane over her chair and attempted to arrange her features into something close to concern.
Isaac walked. He didn’t know where he was going, but he walked.
“What in God’s name is going on?” asked Lady Mawes.
“A bee,” said Isaac over his shoulder, striding down the patio steps and across a manicured lawn.
“On his
face?
”
Isaac didn’t offer a reply. He had nothing to say, no excuse to give that would not embarrass Ruth – embarrass them both – further. As a boy Colin was always attacking Isaac with insults and taunts. When Isaac was younger, he had swallowed it down and never risen to the bait, for he had known he was a lodger. His position was unsafe.
And he could still lose it all now. The meagre sum his great-aunt gave him, the roof over his head, the small security he had.
Fool.
Now it wasn’t only himself he had to look after, it was Ruth too. What had he risked by losing his temper?
Everything.
He turned a corner, then another. Hedges rose up around him, the start of a maze, fencing him in, blotting them all out.
A place to get lost and be lost.
He kept walking and he wanted to walk for ever.
Alone, at last.
Until footsteps crunched along the path behind him.
Ruth
Ruth’s nerves had been uneasy all day. It was as though her veins had been pulled tight, stretched thin, close to snapping underneath her skin. The tense way Isaac held himself and the scowl he constantly wore had not helped either. All she knew about the days ahead was communicated through his demeanour. It was not Isaac’s relatives she was worried about. It was Isaac himself. Compared to everyone else she’d ever known, whose behaviour she’d been able to predict (for the most part), Isaac was a wildcard. And she had already been lulled into a false sense of security by him once before.
Miss Lamont’s Academy for Young Ladies had been the oldest, most refined and ornate building she had ever stayed in. It paled in comparison to Trewince Manor. This place was imposing, bleak and magnificent – and it took her breath away. Whereas Isaac only gave it a cursory glance, she drank it in, slow to follow his lead, catching her own plain reflection in the mirrors they passed.
As grand as it was, it was cold too.
Everything around her warned
do not touch
and
do not look
.
The very walls seemed set to push her out and tell her she did not belong.
Imagine growing up here.
She looked to Isaac. He did not belong here either, not any more.
Lady Mawes was as fearsome as their surroundings, and when she ordered Ruth to stay with her, she felt – for the first time – a need for her unconventional husband. Mild panic set in, for he was the only person she knew, even though she barely knew him at all. The gentleman she’d met those few times before their marriage was a fiction – and the man she knew now was an unknown.
There were no formal introductions to the eccentric family. It seemed as though everyone staying within the house had already been made aware of who she was and why she was there – and she was not welcome for it. Any looks that were thrown her way held little cheer.
“Tell me,” began Lady Mawes, sliding a teacup towards her. It rattled on the painted, metal table. “Has Isaac been unkind since the marriage?”
Ruth was taken aback and she glanced downwards, rather than meet those piercing eyes.
“I know your union was untraditional,” the older woman added tactfully, pulling on the lace ruffles of her gloves. “But I will have him act as a husband should, mark my words.”
There was no hiding from her strength of character. Ruth paled before it, sapped of all the resolve she had tried to hold on to. And there was no way to deflect Lady Mawes’s question or distract her, though she did not know the answer herself.
“Well,” said Ruth, taking a sip from her cup, mouth dry. “We have been married only three weeks. I could hardly—”
“Isaac cannot disobey me and nothing you say here will have repercussions,” she said. “This is all for his benefit.”
“How so?”
“He carries our name, his actions reflect on us and I will ensure he acts as he should.”
Ruth’s eyebrows rose higher. “How
should
he act?”
“Do not think I have fed you to the wolves, girl. If he has ever laid a hand upon you, bullied you, threatened you, I will be told. I will put a stop to it.”
The woman seemed almost eager for Ruth to accuse, to attack, to belittle the man who stood a few feet away from her with a countenance she could not read.
“Do you think so little of him?” Ruth couldn’t stop herself. The thought came so naturally she was scarce sure she’d asked it. “I – forgive me – I did not mean to speak out of turn.”
Lady Mawes sat back with an inscrutable expression. On a silver chain was a small pair of optics, which she pushed onto her nose. “When I saw him last, he was a strong-willed, determined young man. After all I have heard, his behaviour at sea, and now this…” She puckered her lips, lines weaving through her paper-thin skin. “I will not have his wife come upon any disagreeable situations, not when it is my purse strings he lives off.”
“He’s…he’s not been unkind,” said Ruth truthfully. “He…we…it’s hard to say.”
She had resigned herself to their situation so readily, had seen it as punishment for her own follies and mistrusts, that she had not taken time to think on him – on herself – on their marriage. Since Isaac had been staying at the farmhouse, he had done his best to keep out of her way. The rooms that were still liveable, for all intents and purposes, were hers. The set-up suited her. Summer days outside had given her skin a warmer tone, put colour in her cheeks and given her chestnut hair a golden hue. For once, she liked the look of the woman who faced her in the mirror each morning. The work clearing the gardens and tending the badly maintained vegetable patch was calming. Simms had given her all she needed and had been happy for less work to do. Each night, Ruth had gone to bed after a wholesome meal and even Nessa was becoming less cruel to her, if only by a fraction.
The sleeping arrangements were not what she had expected.
But neither was the marriage.
In fact, it was not even a marriage, not in the eyes of the church or the law, for they had yet to spend a night together.
A sudden fear knotted in her stomach: could Lady Mawes tell?
Ruth had not dwelled on the notion often, not since the night of the wedding, for she knew she was – no, safe wasn’t the right word, for that would imply fear was involved. When she had been seeing to Isaac’s injuries, when she’d tended to him – bare skin, light touches – she’d let her mind wander, and the places it had gone were not entirely disagreeable to her.
“My own marriage was difficult at first,” said Lady Mawes. “I shall not have another go through all I did. No one in our family will make those mistakes. On that same subject, I shall be increasing your yearly allowance, with numerous conditions attached, of course.” She raked her eyes down Ruth’s form, eyes bulging behind her spectacles. “We cannot have you running around in those rags, dear.”
Before Ruth could even think to reply – unsure of
how
to reply – a flat, thudding noise ruptured the outdoor scene. Colin was on the ground, a hand on his face.
There was blood.
Again.
Ruth leapt to her feet. Her cup was knocked from its saucer, china smashing. Isaac did not give them a second glance as he sprinted down the stairs and headed out into the garden. Had Ruth not seen a fight take place a week ago, she never would have been able to place the sound – the blow – one man against another. She would have tried to believe the excuse, however unlikely, that Isaac offered. And had she not seen the way Isaac could carry himself, how powerful he was compared to those around him, she wouldn’t have been so worried.
Ruth’s mouth had fallen open and her cheeks were reddening after her husband’s lacklustre explanation. “I can only – I do not – I…” She tried to speak, to form an apology, but all her efforts were cut off.
“Try not to be too surprised,” said Lady Mawes, waving her hand as if to dismiss the entire scene. “The man has had it coming for a long while, what with the way he treated Isaac when they were young. I am only surprised it did not happen sooner.” She raised her voice so that Colin could hear, and she looked more amused than angry. “Now that will be an end to it. There’s to be no more bickering between you both. Do not give me that look, boy. I am the only thing between you and debtor’s prison.”