Ember Island (15 page)

She washed her hands and face, dressed, and went downstairs. Jasper was nowhere in sight. Mrs. Rivard had put out her breakfast, but she ignored it, going for the front door instead.

“Where are you going?” Mrs. Rivard asked.

“I don’t know,” Tilly said.

“Mr. Dellafore was clear that you were to stay in your room.”

Tilly ignored her, slamming the door shut behind her.

She walked. Down the front path, through the gate, down the little gravelly slope, and into the wood. She walked and felt her body move, her blood pumping, and it eased her troubled mind a little. One foot, the other foot, moving through the world,
down to the granite cliffs of St. Peter Port where there were other human beings and noise and activity in the gully-like winding streets. She found herself on Le Paradis, the corner block where the Morningtons’ house stood, and she stopped for a moment and thought.

Ralph and Laura had been so kind and welcoming of her. Laura had said Tilly could always call on her. And at this moment, she needed very badly to speak to somebody about what to do.

She hesitated. If word got back to Jasper . . .

She didn’t care. She couldn’t care. Jasper had let her down so very badly. The love inside her had curdled, turned into sour resentment. She no longer knew what the future held, she no longer knew what Jasper wanted from her or expected of their life together. Except that she should take over the unending list of household chores and be barred in her room when she was inconvenient. That wasn’t a marriage: it was a terrible fairy story. All that was missing was a locked room full of dead wives.

Tilly headed towards the Morningtons’ house, climbed the shallow stone steps, then knocked hard.

A maid answered. They had staff. Tilly remembered having staff. “Yes, madame?” the woman said.

“I’m here to call upon Mrs. Mornington. Is she available? It’s Matilda Dellafore.”

The maid nodded, recognized the name. “One moment, madame.”

Tilly waited, straightening the cuffs of her gloves and glancing around her. The Morningtons’ house was in good repair. This was supposed to be how her life looked. This was what she had always known, what she had been bred for. Not the grim existence she had been plunged into.

Laura Mornington emerged a few moments later, sliding her
hand under Tilly’s elbow. “Tilly! I’m so pleased to see you, but so surprised. Jasper said you were still very ill.”

“I am not ill. I was not ill. I had a sprained wrist. I am tired of being inside.” Tilly realized the words were spilling out without her consent. “I am desperate. I . . .” Her breath hitched.

Laura’s face crumpled. She pulled Tilly close, and called out over her shoulder, “Myra, lemonade in the garden. As quickly as you can, please.” She leaned back, looked in Tilly’s eyes. “We will sit in the sunshine, and we will have some fresh air, and I will listen to your heart.”

Tilly was so grateful that her knees became weak. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

Laura led her around through the house and outside onto a broad stretch of grass, bordered by hedges and a high fence. A tall iron gate stood in the corner of the fence, between veronica and lavender bushes. Through its bars, Tilly could see another narrow street with high granite walls overgrown with vines. It was barely wide enough for more than one person to walk at a time. Laura sat Tilly down at a wrought iron table-and-chair set, then sat opposite. The sun was white and bright on Laura’s face and hair, picking up snowy highlights. “You must tell me all, my dear,” she said.

Tilly drew a deep breath. “Jasper . . . is . . .” She didn’t know the words to use to talk about something so private. “Jasper has a lover.”

Laura showed no sign of shock. “I know,” she said.

And it was a relief, such a relief, to have somebody believe her, and not deny it, and not offer her brandy and tell her she was hysterical.

“Many wives find themselves in your situation,” Laura said. “Many choose to ignore it.”

“I thought he loved me.”

“Perhaps he loves you both.”

Tilly’s heart shrank at the idea. “He bars me in my room. He never speaks kindly to me. I fear he married me for the money my grandpa promised him.”

Laura nodded, her kind eyes fixed on Tilly’s. “We have known Jasper a long time. He is a charming and clever man, and I have always found him to be well mannered and entertaining. When he told us he had married you, we were delighted for him. As long as I’ve known him—and it has been several years—his money ebbs and flows unexpectedly. I doubt that he married you for money. He has never been so desperate that he would use somebody so cruelly.” Laura leaned across and patted Tilly on the knee. “I have faith that his finances will come good again. They always do.”

Laura’s kindness prompted tears. “But how can I bear it, knowing he is loving somebody else? Who is she? Why her?”

Laura turned her head and looked behind her, and gestured at one of the windows on the lower floor of the house. Then she turned back and dropped her voice. “For two years Jasper has paid us a small amount of rent money to ensure one of our staff has her own private room.”

“What? He hasn’t any money, though.”

“He is many months in arrears.”

“Who is she?” Tilly said, thinking of the maid who answered the door. But then it became blindingly clear. The long red-gold hair. “Chantelle?”

“Ah, here’s our lemonade.”

While the maid laid out the jug of lemonade, Tilly studied the window Laura had indicated. The second last one from the end, with an empty windowbox. Perhaps no flowers could grow in the windowbox because Jasper had been climbing in and out over
them. Her stomach heaved. She felt she might be sick. She shot out of her chair, but Laura caught her, brought her back to the table. The maid considered her, puzzled.

“Thank you, Myra, that will be all,” Laura said smoothly.

Laura returned Tilly to her seat and poured her a glass of lemonade. “Here,” she said, “a drink will make you feel better.”

A cold, sea-borne wind sussurated along the tops of the hedges. Tilly gulped the drink. Sour and sweet all at once. It made her feel no better.

Laura sipped hers politely, then put it aside and took Tilly’s hand. “Tilly, a life without a husband is no life. The shame of leaving a marriage . . . what would you do? You have no relatives to return to, Jasper told me that. Perhaps you can learn to turn a blind eye? I know that in this moment you feel awful, but perhaps you can get used to it. When Jasper has some money again and Lumière sur la Mer is more like a home to you, you may feel more comfortable.”

“Is life not meant to be happier than that? I could have married one of the elderly donkeys my grandfather introduced me to and felt ‘comfortable.’ I expected to feel happy.”

“Expectations are the enemy of happiness,” Laura said, her cool fingers leaving Tilly’s hand. The magnolia trees moving in the wind made the sun flicker. “If you need me, I am here. You may always call, even if it is just to cry. I will listen.” Laura’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I know some of your pain.”

Tilly’s eyebrows shot up. “Ralph?”

Laura pressed her lips together, but smiled. Tilly noticed a deepening in the lines around her eyes and mouth. “Well,” she said. “It was a long time ago.”

“Go on. Please.” Tilly was desperate to hear that she wasn’t the only person who had suffered this way.

“Our children were small. I never said anything. To do so would have invited an argument, perhaps even seen me thrown out of my home. If I was to leave him, I wanted to control how and when.” She shrugged. “Twelve years have passed and I find that I am not angry anymore. Ralph and I are very happy. Their mistresses can never keep them. Their wives always can.”

But all Tilly’s body and blood resisted it, wanted to cling to the ideal that she had believed in all these months: that Jasper loved her and she loved him and their life in the beautiful house would unfold lovingly. The pain was horrifying, worse than anything she had felt in her injured wrist.

“Don’t be angry. The anger simply makes it worse. Chantelle knows no better and I worry for her when the affair is ended. I know you would not relish hearing that, but she has far less power than you in the world. Jasper is your husband. As long as he is discreet, you should aim to be comfortable in the knowledge that she has no real claim on him.”

Sympathy for Jasper’s mistress? Tilly carefully hid how infuriating she found Laura’s words.

“So, do you think you can be comfortable, Tilly?” Laura asked.

Tilly forced a smile. She said yes, but she didn’t mean it.

Because it wasn’t fair and, more than anything, Tilly wanted to stand before her husband and tell him, in a fiery rage, that it wasn’t fair. But she feared him too much to do so. And with so much anger in her belly, she could never be comfortable again.

•

That night, a storm blew in. Tilly was reading in the library, by the dim light of a candle, when she heard the first rumble of thunder in the distance. She went to the window and lifted the sash to look
out. The stars were being obliterated as thick clouds rolled in, lightning flashing between them. The first gust of stormy wind jumped down her throat, and she slid the window shut and watched the treetops torn this way and that through the glass.

The storm was so loud, she didn’t hear Jasper’s footsteps at the door.

“Tilly?” he said, making her jump.

She turned. He stood in the threshold with a candlestick, which threw cruel shadows on his face. Tilly realized her heart had sped a little.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” he said.

“I feel quite well.”

“I think you should be in your bedroom. Rivard will bring you some food before she goes for the evening.”

“I could eat downstairs with you.”

“Dr. Hunt has been very clear that you—”

“You certainly believe me well enough to take over keeping this enormous house clean soon.” She gestured around.

“I do not like your hot tone.”

Tilly said nothing.

“You were so sweet-lipped when I met you.”

“I think it fair to say that we were both quite different when we met,” she said boldly.

“To bed,” he said. “Your sharp tongue doesn’t change anything. I am your husband and I demand you return to your room.”

Tilly collected an armful of books and went ahead of him. She was not surprised, after the door was closed, to hear the chair being moved into place. By her bedside table was a glass of brandy. She gulped it, hoping it might put out the fire inside her. Then laughed at herself: throwing brandy on a fire only made it worse.

Her candle sputtered and burned out, and she sat on her bed in the dark, listening to the storm rattle overhead and move on. Nobody brought her any food and she supposed Jasper was punishing her. She wondered if Chantelle had arrived in the rain, whether her clothes hung drying in the kitchen while she lay naked in Jasper’s arms. She wondered if the sable-trimmed coat was among those clothes, the one that she had chosen while out shopping with Grandpa one cool autumn morning. From the moment she slid it on, she had known she wanted it. Not heavy enough for the snow-silent winter, but lovely for a windy October afternoon, with deep pockets to hide her hands in if they grew cold. How she had loved that coat.

How she had loved that life.

The misery fed her anger. How dare he? She wanted her coat back. She would get her coat back.

She went first to the door, jiggled the handle roughly. It would not turn. She kicked the door, but succeeded only in hurting her toe. So she went to the window and pulled up the sash.

The rain had eased to a soft drizzle. The clouds had shredded apart to reveal a few lonely stars. Tilly looked down. She remembered planning this route. Over the windowsill, the ledge, tree branch, ledge, conservatory roof, and ground. Her fear was no match for her anger. One leg out the window, then the other, and onto the narrow ledge. She kept her fingers on the windowsill. Vertigo rolled up through her and a hot flash of fear crossed her heart. But then it passed and she edged along the ledge and put one hand down, then the other, on the sturdy branch between her window and the next. Pulled her knees behind her, then her feet. Waited, dreading the branch creaking or breaking.

Then slowly inched along it and down. Arms around the branch, rough bark getting caught on her sleeves and stripping
her hands of skin. She swung her legs down, reaching out with the tips of her toes. Then half stepped, half jumped, steadying herself on the windowsill.

Tilly took a moment to breathe. The roof of the conservatory was made of glass so she had to be careful to let herself down onto one of the thick parallel roof beams that joined it to the house. She almost lost her nerve. If she landed too hard in the wrong place, she would go through the glass and be cut to ribbons. The rainy cold had cooled her temper, too. This seemed a bad idea. It was all very well to plan an escape route for fire or other emergency, but to use it simply to reclaim a coat? It was madness.

Well, her husband and physician already thought her mad. Conveniently so.

Tilly pressed her back against the stone wall and slid down so she was sitting on the ledge. Her feet were still several inches from the roof beam. She reached out, slid forward.

And landed. She wasn’t prepared for the roof of the conservatory to be so slippery, so she got down on all fours and crawled along the beam. It sloped downwards then left a space of about eight feet to jump. It was too far. She nearly sobbed, to have come all this way and not realize she couldn’t get down from the roof of the conservatory . . .

The problem was, she didn’t dare step off this roof beam to find a better place to land. But she knew there was a hawthorn hedge growing beside the conservatory near the front of the house; it would be enough to break up the jump.

Tilly crouched on the roof beam, and reached her hands out gingerly for the glass. It was wet and slippery. She tested her weight, slid off the beam and onto her stomach. Before she was only damp, but now she was wet and cold through the front of her blouse and skirt. She slithered, snake-like, over the glass
conservatory roof. At each roof beam she had to get on all fours to climb over it, wincing as one knee, then the next, connected with the glass; always expecting the glass to crack. It didn’t.