Forever and Ever (20 page)

“Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“No. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t want you to go.” His hands slid down to her arms in a clasp she remembered very well. There was a heightened, suspended moment in which she felt that anything could happen. And then he let her go, and she heard him step back, away from her.

“It’s late.”

She turned back to face him. “Yes. You’ve had a long trip, you must be tired.” New waves of anxiety washed over her. This time she wouldn’t ask, she would tell. “My father’s room has been made up. You can sleep there.”

“I know where it is. You go up, I think I’ll stay down here a little longer.”

She stared at him. This was what she wanted, so why did she feel so frustrated and awkward? “Good night, then.”

“Good night.”

In the doorway, she paused. “Connor.”

“Yes?”

She made a helpless gesture with one hand. “Thank you.”

“For doing the decent thing?”

She didn’t answer. He toasted her with his wineglass, and once again she didn’t know whom he was mocking, her or himself. All in all, she thought as she crossed the hall to the staircase, everything had gone well. Perfectly, in fact. She walked up the steps as if lead lined her shoes, as miserable as she’d ever been in her life.

***

Wyck House, Eustace Vanstone’s pretentious Tudor mansion on the village square, had an iron fence around it to separate its neat, sterile garden from the cobbled road, not to mention passersby in the High Street. Excluding Lynton Great Hall, it was the grandest house in the district, and Connor had never expected to be strolling up its neat stone path at all, much less with Sophie Deene—Sophie Pendarvis, make that—on his arm. She’d mentioned over breakfast that morning—while her maid and her housekeeper thought of excuses to return again and again to the dining room so they could stare at him—that she thought it best to announce their marriage to her family at once, before someone else announced it first, and asked him tentatively if he would care to accompany her to her uncle’s house in an hour or so. “Not at all,” he’d lied, and his reward had been her visible relief and, better hidden but just as unmistakable, her surprised gratitude. He didn’t care for the implication: that anything he did that was decent or even civilized came as a wonder to her.

She knocked once at the painted black door and stood back, shoulders squared, chin up—a heretic confronting the Inquisition judges bravely. She’d made an effort to look solemn and contrite in a plain gown of blue-gray silk, with wide white cuffs that made him think of the Puritans. But she hadn’t been able to resist a gay paisley shawl with a dashing fringe, and her hat was downright rakish. For himself, he had on his wedding clothes again—dark blue Prince Albert coat and trousers, paid for with the last of his puny savings. He’d had to borrow his necktie from Jack, as well as money for the train and the hired carriage. What would his new bride think if she knew that the sum total of his fortune was down to about twenty-four shillings?

She knocked again, louder, when no one answered the door, and sent him a grim smile. She was beautiful, always beautiful, but she looked tired, as if she’d gotten as much sleep as he had last night. He’d lain awake for hours, thinking of her across the hall in her room, her bed. Thinking of what would become of them. Thinking of their baby. The future was like a dense gray fog his imagination couldn’t penetrate at all.

Rustling behind the door; it opened. “Good morning, Fay,” Sophie said brightly to the uniformed maid who curtsied to her. “Is my uncle at home?”

“Yes, ma’am, he’s in his study. Shall I go and tell him—”

“No, no, I think we’ll surprise him. We’ll just go in, if it’s all right.” Her hand was damp when she slipped it into Connor’s to pull him around the ornate staircase and down the long hallway toward the rear of the house. They stopped at a door that was slightly ajar, and she tapped on it, peering in through the crack. “Uncle Eustace?”

“Sophie” came a voice from inside. “Come in. This is a surprise.”

Connor heard her draw a deep breath. She squeezed his hand once, hard, and let it go, and they walked into the room together.

Vanstone was in the act of getting up when he saw Connor. He halted in midair, buttocks poised comically over his chair, staring in disbelief. “What’s this?” he demanded, straightening. “What is this?” Even working at home alone on a Saturday morning he was fully dressed, as if for a business meeting, in frock coat, striped pants, satin vest. He had keen, ruthless eyes, and he’d struck Connor from the first as a man he wouldn’t want for an enemy. But Connor had a scar on his cheek that said it was too late to make him a friend.

Sophie was smiling a terrible, painted-on smile. “Uncle Eustace, we’ve come to tell you something. I think you will be quite surprised. I hope you’ll be pleased.” She was stalling; she fluttered her hand over her throat, determinedly smiling that ghastly smile. “Mr. Pendarvis—Connor—and I, we’ve—married each other.”

“You’ve what?”

“Yes, it was very sudden, we did it last night, in fact, in the church. Christy did it. An elopement, I suppose you would call it, only we—didn’t go anywhere, to Scotland, I mean, or anyplace like that.” She forced out a laugh. “And now we’ve come to ask for your blessing.”

He couldn’t speak. He stared at them in horror, second after second, trying to believe what she’d told him. Connor knew she was trembling even though he wasn’t touching her. He hadn’t realized how much her uncle’s good opinion mattered to her, and he wondered if she’d known it herself until this moment.

“Why?” Vanstone finally managed to get out.

Sophie said, “Why?” back, as if she didn’t understand the question.

“Why in the name of God did you marry him!”

“Why? Because . . . ” she faltered. “We . . . I . . .”

Connor said, “For the usual reason. Because we love each other. We’ve been corresponding since I left Wyckerley. I kept asking her to be my wife, and finally she said yes.”

Vanstone uttered a truly vile curse, and Sophie went even whiter. “Please, Uncle, I know there’s been unpleasantness in the past—”

“Unpleasantness? This man’s a Judas. You can’t have married him.”

“I have, and I’m asking you—”

“Have you forgotten what he did? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

Connor gritted his teeth, but kept his mouth shut. He was taking his cues from Sophie, and anger apparently wasn’t allowed. They’d come here to make obeisance.

“I’m asking you to try to forget what happened in the past,” she said tensely. “It was—a misunderstanding, and I’ve put it behind me. We want to start our new life together with the blessing of the people we love. Please, can’t you wish us well?”

“No, I can’t,” Vanstone said, and Connor had to give him credit for bluntness. “I can give you a piece of advice, but I doubt that you’ll take it: Find yourself a lawyer today and have this marriage annulled.” Sophie just looked at him in misery, and finally he relented enough to come out from behind his desk, even sat on the edge of it with his hands clasped in his lap. “What are your plans?” he snapped at Connor. “Will you work, or live on my niece’s money?”

Sophie started to answer, but Connor cut her off. “I haven’t decided what I’ll do.” Vanstone snorted. “I have a university education. I read the law for three years with a solicitor; in two more, I’d have been eligible for the examinations. My wife’s money is mine now,” he said belligerently, “and if I choose to use some of it to finish my studies, I will. I’m telling you this for Sophie’s sake, not because I believe it’s any of your business.”

Vanstone scowled and said nothing, stroking the silvery ends of his mustache.

“I don’t care if you approve of me or not,” Connor was goaded into saying. “But—”

“I don’t.”

“But Sophie’s asked for your blessing. She wants it. It’s important to her. May she have it?”

After a long pause, Vanstone said, “No,” and Sophie bowed her head. “But she can have my hopes for her. I hope you’re happy, Sophie. I’m sorry to say I don’t think you will be. I think a time will come when you’ll need my help. I’ll give it to you if I can, and I make a promise to you now, that I’ll try very hard not to say I told you so.”

She smiled feebly. “Thank you for that, then.” She twisted her fingers, glanced helplessly around the room, as if searching for something that could keep her there a little longer. She didn’t want to go, but Vanstone wasn’t making it easy to stay. “Well,” she said, and went toward him uncertainly. He stood up and let her kiss him on the cheek. Connor he just glared at, not offering to shake hands.

On the way out, Connor had time to reflect that they’d been lucky on two scores: no one had hit anyone, and they’d never had to speak to the awful Honoria. A success, then.

But it wasn’t over. As the maid closed the front door behind them, Sophie suddenly muttered, “Oh, my God,” and turned her back to the street.

“What is it?” he asked, alarmed. At the end of the walk, coming toward them through the wrought-iron gate, he saw Robert Croddy.

“He knows.”

“Knows what?”

“About the baby.”

“How could he?”

“I told him.”

“You—” There was no time to say more. She told this—
jackass
about the baby? He couldn’t believe it.

“So you’ve come back,” Croddy sneered, planting himself in the path, blocking the way. He had on a morning coat with tails, a silk tie, a top hat—doing his best to live down his heritage. “I didn’t think you’d have the gall to show your face around here again, Pendarvis. Is he bothering you, Sophie?”

Her short laugh was just shy of hysterical. “No, he’s—”

Connor stepped in front of her, cutting her off. He’d had enough. “You’re bothering me,” he said goadingly, forcing Croddy back a step, then another, by butting chests with him. “Keep away from me, you sodding beermonger, and keep away from my wife.”

“Your
wife
?” He looked around Connor’s shoulder in astonishment. Then he made a mistake: he laughed.

His big square chin made a wide-open target, and Connor’s fist smashing into it made a most satisfying
crunch.
Pain, sharp and bracing, radiated all the way up to his elbow. He watched Croddy stagger back a few steps, drop, and hit the hard ground on his rump.

“Stop it!” yelled Sophie, trying to grab Connor’s arm. Beyond the gate, a man and woman were gaping at them, and others in the street had stopped to stare. Croddy wasn’t going to fight back; he just sat there on the stone path, holding his jaw, glassy-eyed. Sophie started to go to him, but Connor snatched her hand and pulled her around him, through the gate and out into the street.

Ignoring the shocked spectators, he half shoved her into the seat of the pony cart, then sprang up beside her. She twisted around to gaze back at Croddy; when he snapped the reins, the horse jerked forward, and she had to grab at the seat to stay aboard.

He whipped the pony into a canter, much too fast for the sleepy center of Wyckerley. Pedestrians and ducks scattered. When they got to the Tavistock road, he didn’t slow down. “Why,” he demanded over the clatter of hooves and wheels, “did you tell that horse’s ass about the baby?”

She’d taken her hat off so it wouldn’t blow away. Looking straight ahead, she answered through her teeth, “It seemed the decent thing to do for the man to whom I was proposing marriage.”

He saw red. He couldn’t speak—he didn’t know any curses vile enough for his fury. When he glanced at Sophie, she looked wary, almost frightened of him, and he was just foul-minded enough to be glad.

“What are you in such a goddamn hurry for?” she wanted to know, voice quaking with the jerking of the gig.

She never swore; she must be furious. So was he. “Why, Sophie,” he snarled back, “I’m in a hurry to get away on our honeymoon.”

“Our
what
? Where are we going?”

He snapped the reins, giving poor Val a good smack on the rump. “To Cornwall,” he said with relish. “I’ve met your family, sweetheart. Now it’s time you met mine.”

XVI

Connor’s family was dead.

Sophie didn’t find that out for three days, though, the length of time it took them to travel half the long leg of Cornwall to the village of Trewythiel. They took a southern route and skirted the dreary moorlands, for which she was glad; her mood was already bleak enough. The pace they set was leisurely in the extreme—the first night they got no farther than Liskeard—and she wondered if he was being careful because of her condition. If so, his concern came a little late. But she didn’t ask, didn’t so much as inquire about their destination, and he didn’t tell her. They were furious with each other, and it seemed they had both chosen silence over shouting this time to express it.

At Liskeard there was no train, and no coaches until Monday. That left nothing to do on Sunday but sightsee. After they looked at the stained glass in St. Neod’s and the tower of St. Martin’s, and after they wandered through the public gardens on the site of an old castle, there wasn’t much to do. But they had taken separate rooms, thank God. Playing the tourist with a person to whom one wasn’t speaking was more exhausting than Sophie could ever have imagined possible. By early afternoon, she pleaded fatigue with perfect truth and escaped to her room, and didn’t come out of it until Monday morning.

They traveled the short distance to Lostwithiel by coach, then caught the train for Truro. Two things immediately dampened her spirits even further. The pretty hotel they found near the train station had only one room to let for the night, and Connor took it, without hesitation or consultation. At least until now the worry that this was going to be a honeymoon in any real sense had been mercifully absent. Now it was mercilessly present, and she suffered from it (in silence, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was a nervous wreck) for what remained of the day. The second bit of unpleasantness had to do with money. Their departure from Wyckerley had been hasty and unexpected; she’d had time to pack only a few clothes—at least by her lights; her new husband had expressed amazement at the number of bags she’d managed to fill in an hour—and she hadn’t even brought along her maid. She’d taken all the money there was in the house, which wasn’t much, and handed it over to Connor without a second thought. In Truro, in their one small hotel room, he informed her with unprovoked harshness that they were out of cash, and that if she expected him to pay for meals, lodging, and transportation for the remainder of the journey, he would either have to get a job or she would have to wire her bank in Tavistock for more funds. The source of his hot, unexpected anger eluded her until she thought, for the second time, to put herself in his place. Then she understood. It was a matter of pride.

They sent a message by telegraph, and received a reply that a check transfer could be accomplished by morning of the next day. Marveling privately at the wonders of modern technology, they spent the rest of the day exploring the town.

Sophie wanted to see the coinage hall and compare it to the one in Tavistock. If they had been an hour earlier, they could have witnessed a ticketing—an auction of tin and copper ore by local mine owners to the great metal companies in the district. As it was, she only saw the building, and discovered that it was bigger and newer than the ancient one she went to twice monthly with Dickon Penney.

The afternoon was chilly, and the sun was setting across the harbor, dry in low tide, with large vessels having to anchor three miles out. In a glum mood, they walked back to their hotel, lost in their thoughts, barely speaking. Sophie could not imagine their lives past this minute, not together. She was plagued by flashes of remembrance, poignant, mind scenes of the good times they’d shared, and once in a while she remembered much too well why she had loved him. But they were so very different. Under any other circumstances they would never have chosen each other, certainly never married. They might have been attracted, but common sense or an instinct for emotional survival would have gotten in the way and saved them from making a lifetime commitment.

And yet here they were, striving to stay true to themselves while they struggled not to kill each other with coldness. Was he as horrified as she? And did he harbor the same secret hope that somehow, against logic and all the odds against them, they could find a way to make this marriage work? Since they couldn’t talk to each other, there was no way to find out.

They ate dinner in the hotel’s private dining room. She was hungry and the meal was good, but as the minutes passed, what little conversation there was became sparser, tighter. She caught him staring at her, and she didn’t like the speculation in his eyes. He was waiting for something, and it didn’t take her long to realize what it was. Her nerves were in shreds by the end of the meal, but she didn’t get up from the table; instead she took minute sips from a glass of watered wine, wondering how she could make it last for infinity. Something in his expression assured her he was aware of, probably amused by, her discomfort. “I have a say in this,” she burst out suddenly, apropos of nothing.

“Not much of one,” he shot back, understanding her perfectly.

“Because you’re my lord and master?”

“Now you’re getting the idea.”

“In a pig’s eye.”

They both got up at once, chairs scraping, looking like duelists ready to fire.

“If you would care to discuss this, I suggest we do it out of sight and hearing of everyone in the room,” she hissed.

“You took the words out of my mouth.”

Later, lying rigid on her side of the invisible but inviolable dividing line down the center of the bed, she feigned sleep by breathing deeply, and entertained depressing philosophical thoughts about Pyrrhic victories. Would it have been so wrong to make love with him? They were married; the damage—although she didn’t like to think of their baby as “damage”—was done. What did it matter that they didn’t love each other? Millions of loveless couples engaged in marital relations, and no one thought it was wrong. Was she trying to punish him? Well, yes; she had to admit she was, partly. The other part was some gesture toward delicacy, a reluctance to engage in intimacies with a man who had used and betrayed her. But what good did such sensibilities do in the long run, really? Wouldn’t it be better to go through the pretense of a normal marriage and hope that somehow, in time, through habit if nothing else, the pretense would become reality?

Besides, “used and betrayed” didn’t ring as true to her as it once had. It had become a cliché from overuse. Seeing Connor, being with him day after day, and now night after night, had started to chip away at the neatness of his image in her mind as a conscienceless seducer. Gradually, unfortunately, she was beginning to see him as a man.

In the morning, she’d have sworn she hadn’t slept a wink all night and believed it, except for Connor’s insistent voice, “Wake up, Sophie,” and the gentle shaking of his hand on her shoulder. She rolled over to look at him. “What time is it?” she mumbled, blinking sleepily.

“Early.”

“You’re already dressed.”

“We’re leaving now. Get up and dress while I go out and hire us a carriage.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going home.”

“Home?”

His smile was a little grim. “My home. Trewythiel.”

***

Six Pendarvis graves lay in a corner of the sunken, neglected churchyard of St. Dunston’s, under the writhing arms of a dead locust tree. Mary and Egdon must be the parents: they were the oldest. There were Jude and Diggory as well, beloved sons, who had died within a year of each other, and a tiny marker for little Ned, “asleep at birth.” The newest grave, only a year old, was Catherine’s. She was eleven.

Connor had moved away from Sophie, to stand at the opposite side of the mournful heaps and thin granite headstones; otherwise she’d have taken his hand. “How did they die?” she asked softly.

“My father had the miner’s consumption,” he answered without looking at her. “Jude fell off a rotten ladder at seventy fathoms. Diggory died in an underground flood. My mother . . . she just died. Of grief, we said. But it was a blessing, because she missed having to watch Cathy fade away to nothing. Cathy had a frail heart.”

Sophie covered her mouth with her folded hands, stricken. She could feel his pain, and she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to forgive or understand him, but pity and compassion were undermining her resolve while she stood there. “So,” she said. “It’s only you and Jack now?”

“Just Jack and me.”

And Jack was ill with the disease that had killed his father. She’d have gone to Connor then, put her arms around him and held him whether he wanted it or not—she wanted it—but he dropped to his knees and began to brush dead leaves off the grave nearest him. She hesitated, then knelt on her side and copied him.

They worked in silence, and when they finished cleaning the graves he still didn’t speak, only stood for a moment with his head bowed. Then he turned and walked away.

She caught up to him at the edge of what passed for the main street in Trewythiel, a mean little avenue, rutted and full of horse and dog offal, edged with a handful of narrow, leaning cottages. He was staring off to his left, shading his eyes, and she followed his gaze to the last cottage before the lane turned out of sight. “I grew up in that house,” he said, pointing to a small, ugly, thatch-roofed building of gray stone. It had no garden, at least in front; the low doorway opened directly onto the street. He looked at her, as if waiting for her to speak. She didn’t like the knowing twist of his lips when he saw that she had nothing to say.

An old woman was shuffling toward them in the street, clothed in black and muffled in a shawl, tapping the ground with a stick in front of her tiny steps. Sophie thought she might be blind. She kept her head down and would have passed them by without looking up if Connor hadn’t said suddenly, “Mrs. Gregg?”

She halted. “What’s that?” She peered up at him, scowling in confusion, not suspicion. “Who is it?”

“It’s Connor Pendarvis. Do you remember me?”

“Connor?” She wasn’t blind. Her leathery face creased in a sweet, sudden smile. “Little Con. The smart one. Yes, o’ course I remember you. You took all my Malcolm had in his head and then went off and left us. Tell me, did it do you any good?”

His quick laugh sounded abashed. “No, not much.”

“Hah. Malcolm’s gone, you know. Eight years now.”

“I know. I was sorry to hear it, Mrs. Gregg.”

She nodded. “No one replaced him. They send a curate down from Truro every two Sundays to preach. The rectory’s no fit place to live anymore; I’ve had to move in with my niece.”

He murmured something sympathetic. Sophie made a connection and realized who she must be—the widow of the Wesleyan minister Connor had once told her about, the man who had taught him to read and write. The one who had given him a book about a magic boy.

“Did you hear they closed up the mine?”

Connor nodded. “Jack told me.”

“Might as well’ve closed up the village while they were about it. Nothing’s left now, not that there was much before. We’re all just waiting for each other to die. Who’s this?” she asked without a pause, pivoting to face Sophie.

“I beg your pardon—this is my wife.”

Sophie took the old woman’s dry hand in hers, murmuring that she was happy to meet her.

“Pleased to meet you, too.” She sent Connor a stern look. “And you said all that learning didn’t do you any good.”

“I misspoke,” he acknowledged, smiling.

“So what have ee come down here for?” she asked. “To see the graves?” He nodded. “Well, there’s naught much else for you, I don’t expect. Nobody lives in your house, nobody a’tall. You were right to get out, young Con. You look like a gentleman, and you’ve married this fine young lady. Now ee’d do well to get out o’ Trewythiel and never look back, because it’s finished.”

She left them after a sudden, brusque leave-taking—so that she wouldn’t cry, Sophie suspected—and they watched her small, dark figure hobble down the lane and out of sight. Their mood was somber as they walked back to the carriage they’d left in front of the ancient, crumbling church. Connor handed her in, and they drove slowly out of the village, heading north.

“Let’s not go back to Truro,” Sophie said out of the blue.

“What?”

“Let’s go south, Con. I want to see the coast.”

They’d come to the crossroad at the bottom of the village. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him smile. “Then that’s what we’ll do,” he said, and turned the horse toward the sea.

***

They went to Lizard Point, the southernmost tip of the county. Of the country, too, he pointed out with Cornish pride, and she pretended she didn’t know that already. The village of Lizard had a tiny inn called Crawler’s—named after the proprietor, they were assured, not the migratory mode of the town’s namesake. After depositing their luggage in their small room, whose chief asset was a balcony overlooking the Channel, they set out, by mutual consent, for a walk along the cliffs. The clean, fresh wind blowing in from the west felt like a tonic, and Sophie stood on a headland above Kynance Cove and let it whip at her skirts, her hair. She shut her eyes when they teared, and imagined the wind was blowing away all the sorrow and regret inside her, all her unhappiness. If only they could start over. That wish was almost a chant now, she’d had it so often. But trouble didn’t go away because you wanted it to, and she was cursed with a long memory.

Still, when Connor took her hand to help her over a fall of rocks in their path, she let him keep it afterward, even though the way was smooth. Anyone passing by would probably mistake them for lovers, she mused. Honeymooners. Not that there were many people about to see them; the tourists who came to look at the colored veins of the serpentine rock or explore the cliff caves were gone now, because summer was over. It was their loss, because out of the wind, on the lee side of a boulder or a crevice in a sunny angle of the cliff, it was as warm as July.

The tide was ebbing. They found a cove sheltered from the wind by a line of black rocks slanting into the sea like crooked teeth, and sat down in the soft, warm sand to look at the waves. Bags of cloud sailed high in a sky the same pigeon’s egg blue as the water. Connor lay on his side with his head propped on his hand. His stillness and the faraway look in his eyes dimmed the beauty of the scene for her, because she could feel his melancholy as sharply as if it were hers. She wanted to save him, protect him from it, but she couldn’t. Madness to want it anyway. “Tell me about your family,” she said, half expecting him to rebuff her.