Forever and Ever (12 page)

“Sophie? Where are you? Sophie!”

She scrambled up in a flurry of skirts and petticoats, heart hammering, barely suppressing a cry. She gave her hair a frantic swipe—it was loose and full, disheveled from Jack’s fingers—and darted to the opening in the hedges. “Here, Uncle, I’m just coming!” He was across the way by the garden house, looking for her inside the dark doorway. He turned when he heard her, tall and severe in black, his citified top hat fitting squarely on his sleek head. He started toward her.

She threw a glance back at Jack. He’d gotten to his feet. He was watching her, waiting for her to walk away, toward her uncle, so he wouldn’t know he was here. The look on his face pained her—the face she’d just caressed, the hard, straight mouth she’d softened with kisses moments ago in a slow, teasing line. She saw resignation in his eyes, and cynicism. But the worst thing she saw was good-bye.

“I’m here,” she called again to her uncle, needlessly. “I’m here—with Mr. Pendarvis!”

***

It wasn’t like the last time, when she’d flaunted her association with him to her obnoxious cousin like a dare or a slap in the face. There was still bravado in what Sophie had done, a trace of the rebellious girl challenging propriety, convention, and authority all wrapped into one imposing figure: Eustace Vanstone, mine owner, magistrate, and mayor. But Connor couldn’t be angry with her this time. Because there was no condescension in this act, only courage.

But what had it accomplished? He picked up a stone and flung it as far as he could into the yellow hayfield bordering the lane he was tramping, thinking of Vanstone’s face when he’d seen him walking out of the orchard behind Sophie. Puzzlement, suspicion, dismay, and finally horrified certainty—they’d all flitted across his cold, dignified features, as easy to read as an alehouse signboard. Sophie had stuck to her story—“Mr. Pendarvis has been keeping me up to date on some business at the mine”—but evidence to the contrary was everywhere, and Vanstone was no fool. She even had grass stains on her dress. And she’d limped out without her cane; Connor had to hand it to her, aware that his tie was loose and his waistcoat wasn’t buttoned. They looked guilty.

But nothing was going to be said about it in front of him. He’d tarried as long as he could, trying to gauge Sophie’s state of mind, trying to understand whether staying was helping or hurting her. In the end he’d decided on the latter, but his leave-taking didn’t feel right either.

But, of course, there was nothing else to be done. The wonder was that it hadn’t happened sooner—their discovery. They’d been playing with fire and, like children, they’d grown more careless the longer they’d put off disaster. He took most of the blame for himself. He could have stopped coming at any time and saved her. She’d been the passive one, bored and restless with nothing to do; she probably welcomed his visits in part just for the diversion. But he’d stuck his head in the sand and ignored his conscience, not to mention his common sense. How had this happened? How could he have forgotten, even temporarily, the serious goals that had always sustained him for the sake of some wildly improbable dream? He was awake now, thanks to Eustace Vanstone, and he was ashamed of himself.

He’d done everything wrong. Lied to Sophie about who he was. Lied to the Rhadamanthus Society about needing more time—he could have finished his report on Guelder mine last week,
two
weeks ago. And there was no solution, no way out. If he told Sophie his name wasn’t even Jack and everything about him was a fraud, what good would it do? The truth would hurt her more than the lies already had. The only honorable thing to do was go away. It wouldn’t take much to revive her old bad opinion of him; she’d feel as if she’d been blind for a while and now she had her sight back. And she’d forget him fast, look back and wonder what could have possessed her that summer. But for as long as he lived, he knew he would never forget her.

Jack was waiting for him, lying on Connor’s bed. He wasn’t asleep, though; he was staring up at the ceiling. “You had another letter from Rhads,” he roused himself to say, reaching over to the night table and tossing an envelope to Connor at the bottom of the bed. He looked worse than usual, gray-faced and exhausted, and lately he’d started to lose weight again.

“How are you feeling, Jack?”

He gave his usual shrug. “About the same”—his usual answer. “Aren’t ee going to open it?”

“I already know what it says.” The society wanted his final report on Guelder, and they wanted it now. A few days ago he’d sent an addendum to his so-called preliminary report, advising them that the mine owner was “actively considering the installation of man-machines” to replace the dangerous, antiquated system of ladders that had been in place for a quarter of a century. “Actively considering” was an exaggeration of gross proportions, but not, he told himself, an outright lie. “Just think about it,” he’d said to her, days ago when they were still talking to each other about substantive things like mining, and he was still pretending to himself that one of the reasons he visited her was to educate her, subtly and artfully, on revolutionary mine safety techniques. But when she’d heard how much the new mechanism would cost, she’d set the subject aside. “Just give it some thought,” he kept insisting, and finally she’d thrown up her hands and agreed, laughing. Hence, the “active consideration” he’d felt justified, just barely, in adding to his report.

“What have you been doing all day?” he asked his brother, shaking him by the boot.

“Lyin’ here mostly. Thinkin’ o’ last night.”

“What happened last night?”

Jack stacked his hands behind his head on the pillow. “I were wi’ Sidony. We . . . well, we done it. In a hayfield near to Lynton, all in the moonlight. She stopped wi’ me till morning almost. Con, she were a virgin.”

“Was she?” He looked at him curiously. Jack wasn’t a man to boast about his female conquests, but he wasn’t particularly demure about them either. At the moment he didn’t look proud or modest; he looked . . . moved. And confused. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone and fallen in love with her,” he said softly.

“Love,” he snorted, but his eyes were uneasy. “Ha. That’s a rich one. Very rich. Me in love. Oh, yes.”

“Well, then. How was she?”

He sat up jerkily, and the blood suffusing his ashy face made him look healthy for a few seconds. “Don’t talk like that. She isn’t like that, Con, so just leave it, see?”

“All right.”

“She’m different, understand?”

“Yes.”

He looked away, sheepish. He made a point of lying back down on the bed very casually, separating himself from that agitated fellow who cared a damn about Sidony Timms. “So. Tell me about yer afternoon wi’ the lovely Miss Deene.”

Rather than answer, Connor pretended he gave a damn about his mail and ripped open the envelope from the Rhadamanthus Society.

“Well, what? What’s it say?”

Connor looked up, stunned. “They want me.”

“What do they—”

“They want me to come to London and work for them.”

“The devil.”

“Shavers’ bill won’t be brought in this session after all, so the report’s gone all to hell. Now they want me to come and write speeches for them.”

“In London, you say?”

“Speeches for Shavers to workingmen’s clubs, and articles, and broadsides—I’d be paid to lobby for them.”

“Oh, Con. ’Tis perfect for you.”

“Yes.”

It was the solution he’d felt too hopeless even to look for. His “professional” life, such as it was, had ended here in Wyckerley after the society decided not to finance his report on the copper mine in Buckfastleigh, and he had never been able to see the future for himself, or Jack, beyond the last day he would spend at Guelder. He’d felt as if his life had come to a halt since the death of the Falmouth attorney to whom he’d been articled as a clerk two years ago. Now the thread was picking up, the natural progression becoming visible again,
possible.
He should feel relieved, elated—but there was a weight on his spirits he hadn’t anticipated. The price for getting his life back was going to be very high.

“I’ll have to go.”

“Yes, o’ course ee’ll have t’ go. When?”

“Right away. They say immediately. You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

Jack pressed a fold in the knee of his old corduroy trousers with his thumb and index finger, staring at the crease with great interest. “I dunno, Con, I can’t say. Gi’ me leave t’ think on it.”

X

On Friday, it looked like rain. Through the glass doors of the sunporch, Sophie watched moody gray clouds blowing up from the south, and despaired. Channel winds usually portended a storm. If it rained, Jack wouldn’t come.

Rose petals littered the terrace, pink and ivory, coral and blood red, skimming across the stones, spinning in mad little whirlpools propelled by the breeze. The treetops swayed, and the birds called out the nervous warning song they sang before a storm. Sophie stared at the pale, hollow-eyed reflection of herself in the glass and thought,
Who are you?
She hardly recognized her face; she looked like a stranger.

He had to come. They couldn’t leave things the way they were, and this was their last chance. After today, her life would have to go back to . . . what it had been before. Normal, she’d almost thought, but
normal
had come to mean seeing Jack every day. Today that would end, though—if he came—and tomorrow people would come to her tea party, Sunday she would go to church, and on Monday she would return to Guelder. Then what?

No answer. She only knew he had to come, he had to. Uncle Eustace hadn’t insulted him yesterday, not in words, but he hadn’t needed to. Everything in his manner had declared his disapproval of Jack’s presence in her home, and his disgust with Sophie for countenancing it. She ached when she thought of how that must have made Jack feel. She knew him now, understood his pride as well as she understood her own. She longed to see him and tell him none of it mattered, her uncle wasn’t like her, nothing had changed, they could still . . . they could still . . .

“Oh, God,” she mumbled, pressing her cheek to the cool glass. She opened the door and let the wind blow in her face. It even smelled like rain. “Oh, God,” she whispered with her eyes closed, and the breeze snatched the words and blew them away.

By noon, the wind had dropped and the racing clouds had slowed to a stately march. At two, the sun came out. At five, Jack still hadn’t come.

“He’s not coming.” She said it into her hands as she paced in the garden, not wanting Maris or Mrs. Bolton, if they happened to be looking, to see her talking to herself. But her mind felt too full of worry to keep the words in, and saying them out loud gave her some relief. Not much, but some. “Maybe this is how people go crazy,” she muttered into her palms. What was happening to her? She was frantic to see him, and she wasn’t even sure why. On the face of it, nothing had changed. They’d been caught, and yet their afternoons together had been about to end anyway. She had a secret, unexamined fear that she was losing him, but that wasn’t what was causing this strange urgency. The truth she wasn’t ready to face was how much losing him was going to cost.

She heard a step on the stone terrace. Afraid to hope, she turned toward the house slowly, schooling her flushed features into calm.

Ah, Jack. He stood on the top step, watching her, and she felt her heart lift in her chest like a bird taking flight. Too late now for caution or second thoughts. Everything about him was beautiful to her. And everything was falling apart, but she couldn’t stop the glad, thankful smile that went out to him like an open hand, or a candle in a window whose soft glow said
welcome.

His smile was slower, sadder. She disregarded it and moved toward him, meeting him halfway. She loved his long-legged walk and the hard, tough set of his shoulders, his graceful hands. The way his hair grew. She stopped in front of him, longing to touch him. “I thought you weren’t coming,” she said with her hands clasped under her chin. “I’m so glad you came.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

“I know,” she agreed without thinking. “Oh, but what does it matter? I don’t care, Jack, I truly don’t—I had to see you!”

“Sophie,” he whispered, and lifted his hand toward her—then dropped it back to his side. “Can we sit down? I have to tell you something.”

She’d thought he would want to go into the orchard, where they could be private. This was better, and of course he was right—but she had a sinking feeling of disappointment.

They sat in their usual place beside the garden house. She didn’t need the pillowed stool for her foot anymore; she hardly even needed her cane. Odd, no doubt, to feel regret because an injury had healed, but she did.

“What happened after I left you?” he asked, leaning toward her, his eyes dark with concern.

“Nothing. You mean did he scold me? No, nothing like that. He’s not my guardian,” she said with an unsuccessful laugh. “And I’m not—”

“What did he say to you? Tell me.”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what he thinks.”

“Tell me.”

“Jack, can’t we leave it? I don’t want to say what he said. It was nothing terrible, and nothing you can’t imagine, I’m sure. But—don’t make me say it. Why spoil this last day for us?”

“It is our last day, Sophie,” he said quietly. “But how did you know?”

“I didn’t mean that. It doesn’t have to be. But this—” She lifted her hand, gesturing at the garden, the house. “It’s probably . . . I don’t know if we . . .” She flushed with embarrassment and distress. She was falling in love with a man she couldn’t even invite into her house.

“No. No, it is our last day.” She started to speak, but he leaned toward her and said, “Listen. There’s an organization called the Rhadamanthus Society. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

She nodded. “They’re socialists, aren’t they?”

“They’re reformers.”

“My uncle says they’re socialists.”

He smiled grimly. “Your uncle thinks the queen’s husband is a socialist. But we won’t argue about that now.”

“No. What do they have to do with you, Jack?”

“They’ve offered me employment.”

She sat back in her chair. “They’ve
what
?”

“They think I could be helpful to them,” he said, and his voice was stilted. “In their efforts to improve health and safety conditions in mines. Because of my experience. As a miner.”

“But—how do they even know about you?”

He looked away, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “Oh, I . . . wrote them a letter once, a long time ago. They printed it in their broadsheet, and that started a correspondence.”

“You never told me.”

“I didn’t think of it.”

The thought that he was leaving something out floated through her mind for a second, then sank beneath a wave of anxiety. “Are they in London?”

“Yes.”

“Would you go there?”

“Yes.”

She put her hand on her throat. “Are you going to do it?”

“I think I must.”

“When?”

“Right away.”

“I see. And so you’ve come to tell me good-bye.”

“Sophie.”

She stood up and started to walk away from him, holding her hot cheeks. She heard him behind her and quickened her steps. At the entrance to the orchard, she threw back over her shoulder, “Don’t come after me, Jack, please don’t—”

He didn’t obey. She craved solitude, but when he stopped her blind flight by putting his arms around her and pulling her back against him, she wanted that even more. “I’m all right,” she kept saying, pressing his hands to her middle, “I’m all right. Oh, Jack.” She turned her head to kiss him, his hair, his cheekbone. “I don’t blame you for going. It’s an opportunity to better yourself, and you must take it. I know that.” She turned in his arms, facing him. “But—what if I asked you to work for me? Not as a miner—something else. You could be Jenks’s assistant, or Dickon Penney’s.” He started to shake his head. “Or anything—you could be anything, Jack, you’re so clever—”

“No, Sophie, no. I can’t work for you.”

“But why?”

“I can’t. It’s not possible. Don’t ask me.”

More than the words, the look in his eyes and the strong grip of his hands on her shoulders convinced her there was no use in arguing. Rather than cry, she went into his arms and held tight. He’d known all along, then, that this was the end. But to lose him like this,
really
lose him, never to see him again—how could that be right?

“Don’t go,” she begged, her mouth muffled against the collar of his coat. “Jack, can’t we find a way?”

His arms around her tightened painfully. “Sophie, it would never work for us. You and I . . . how can I stay?”

“Stay . . .”

“Darling.” He put his cheek next to hers. “I can’t.”

She let her breath out in a long, hopeless sigh and pulled away to look at him. The same misery she felt was in his face, the same sorrow. She took his hand. “Stay with me tonight, then.”

His handsome brows came together. He said very softly, “What?”

She laughed. It was as if she’d just dived from a great height, and the hard part was over. All she felt now was breathless. “Come to me tonight, Jack. You want me, don’t you?”

“I—” He couldn’t say anything else.

“You won’t leave me like this.”

“Sophie, no.”

“Yes. Stay with me.” She had both of his hands, and she was squeezing hard. “My housekeeper goes away on Fridays, and I’m alone. Except for Thomas, but he wouldn’t know—he never comes to the house after dinner. You could come tonight.”

He started to say no again, but she put her fingers over his mouth. “Please. It’s what I want. I’m not asking for anything else. Come to me, Jack, come when the moon rises.”

***

She couldn’t sit still. Twice she tried to wait for him on the sofa in the day parlor, and both times she jumped up after two minutes and began to pace. She straightened the books on the bookcase, blew dust off the candlesticks on the flap table, took her handkerchief to the crystal of the eight-day clock on the mantelshelf. Should she change her clothes? Would that be silly? But why was she so nervous? She wanted to be serene, confident—but she was jumping out of her skin. Maybe she ought to take a glass of sherry. Or brandy; there was still a bottle in her father’s liquor cabinet. She’d started for the door before she caught herself. How absurd. Courage in a glass was the last thing she needed right now.

She began to pace again.
Oh, what have I done?
Everything had seemed so clear a few hours ago, and now it seemed completely mad. She was going to give her innocence away to a miner. She might be in love with him, and he might be the cleverest miner she’d ever encountered, but that was still what he was and what he had been all his life. Did it matter?

Of course it mattered. She couldn’t lie to herself, any more than she could help being who she was. At school in Exeter, she’d belonged to a club called the Daughters of Victoria—“Doves”—and one of the club’s many precepts on ladylike deportment had been that true gentlewomen had congress with the lower classes only for the purposes of trade or charity. The notion that a gentlewoman might own a copper mine had, of course, never entered a single Dove’s mind.

A soft knock sounded at the front door. Her heart leapt into her throat; she patted at her hair in the mirror over the mantel, dismayed by the two bright pink spots on her cheeks and the glitter in her eyes—pure nerves. She didn’t want him to see her this way, full of fears and second thoughts. The knock came again. She smoothed her skirts, squared her shoulders, and went to answer it.

It was Robert Croddy.

Staring at him, dapper in plaid trousers and a coat with a yellow flower in the buttonhole, Sophie felt all the excited color in her cheeks drain away. “Robert! What are you doing here?” she blurted out ungraciously.

He had his arm curled around his hat, holding it to his chest in a stiff, formal posture. He looked ridiculous; she couldn’t help imagining him giving the hat a good strong flick with his wrist and sending it flying like a discus. He sent her his tight-lipped smile. “May I come in?”

“No!” Getting a grip on herself, she tried to smile back. “I’m sorry—I’m alone tonight. I’d invite you in, but it wouldn’t be proper. I’d better not.” Looking past his shoulder, surreptitiously frantic, she could see nothing but his shiny black chaise in her drive, hear nothing but the impatient stamp of his horse. The platinum face of the full moon stared at her from above the dark treetops.

“No, no, of course not. Certainly not. Forgive me, Sophie, I had no idea you were alone.” He frowned. “Why are you alone? Where are your servants?”

“My housekeeper is often absent on Friday evenings,” she said coolly, hoping to convey that none of this was any of his business. “Was there something you wanted?”

“Only to tender my regrets. I see I should have sent a note.”

“Your regrets?”

“I won’t be able to come tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“You invited me,” he said stiffly, “to tea.”

“Oh! Yes, of course, forgive me—I was dozing over a book when you knocked, and I’m not quite awake yet.”

He bowed. “I won’t detain you.”

“I’m sorry you can’t come tomorrow,” she remembered to say as he was turning away.

“Thank you. Some last-minute business makes it impossible.”

She wondered what his business might be, but didn’t ask; that would only make him stay longer. Anyway, Robert never liked to speak of the details of his father’s brewery business, or even his investments in her uncle’s mine, for that matter. He was old-fashioned in that way. He was
in trade
, as the pejorative saying went; but unlike Sophie, he was ashamed of it.

She lingered a moment by the open door after he went away, hoping the cool, quiet night would calm her. Behind her, a lamp glowed on the table in the foyer. She’d left it there on purpose, because she wanted Jack to come to the house tonight, not the garden. The crunch of Robert’s carriage wheels on the gravel drive faded away. Out of the stillness and the dark, a form materialized, just beyond the hedges in the circle of the drive. Sophie froze—until the moonlight made bluish shadows in Jack’s black hair, spilled silver on his shoulders and his long, handsome legs. She smiled. All her doubts drifted away like dead leaves in a spring river current.

He took the steps in one long stride, and she moved back, away from him, inviting him in with her body. That he should be here, alone with her in her house, her hallway—it took her breath away. It was almost a minute before she realized he wasn’t smiling back at her.