Chapter Two
Three years later
Annalise clutched the leather portfolio containing her late father’s naturalist work as the carriage rolled past the Hyde Park gates. Here, Patrick had whispered, “I love you.” Gazing deeper into the park, she spied the spreading oak where they had first kissed—a quick, nervous brush of the lips. Later, in a darkened, empty room beside a ballroom, they’d enjoyed a more indulging kiss. How these memories had comforted her at night as she’d kept vigil beside her sick parents’ beds as the lonely country wind keened in the grate.
“You are smiling, miss,” Mrs. Bailey, Annalise’s family servant, remarked from across the hired coach. “I haven’t seen you smile since your papa was alive.”
“I’m so happy to be back,” Annalise cried, gazing out at the streets that she and Patrick had once walked. “So happy.”
She had chosen to come back to London after living under a cloud of dread for more than three years, nursing her dying parents in the quiet, lonely countryside. And now, although she still walked the earth, it felt as though huge parts of her were buried in the churchyard along with her parents.
“I don’t understand how this city—Satan’s broadside—can make you so happy,” Mrs. Bailey said.
Annalise couldn’t explain to poor Mrs. Bailey, who was country-bred and, until now, had never ventured beyond the county of her birth, how London shined as bright as the crown jewels in Annalise’s mind. Although her one Season had ended in shameful ruin, for a small time in London, when Patrick had loved her as much she loved him, she’d felt more alive than she ever had in her life. She wanted to live that way again—filled with hope, laughter, and love.
The coach skirted Mayfair’s perimeter before finally reaching its destination, a stately town house on Wigmore Street.
“This is it?” Mrs. Bailey hmphed. “This is your uncle’s fine London home? I was expecting one of those fancy houses by the park. This is a teensy thing. How do they get everyone in there?”
“It’s larger than it appears from the outside,” Annalise said diplomatically. Uncle Harry’s family, like their home, hung at the outer edges of fashionable Society.
The front door flew open. A young lady in vivid blue cotton rushed out. Her spiraling honey-colored curls bounced around her as she cried, “She’s here! She’s here!”
Good heavens, was that little Phoebe all grown up now and rolling her hair? Aunt Sally had written that Phoebe was enjoying her first Season, but in Annalise’s mind Phoebe remained the adolescent who fawned over Annalise’s gowns and stayed up until the early hours for her return to listen, wide-eyed, to tales of the balls that she had attended that evening.
Behind Phoebe, two more girls followed—Shelley and Caroline, who had been a toddler when Annalise had been sent away. The three hopped about the walk excitedly, soon to be joined in their makeshift dance by their mother, Sally Sommerville. The daughters and mother all shared the same physical characteristics—creamy skin flecked with freckles, golden hair, long noses, and bow-like lips. Annalise took after her Dutch father in looks, but it was always said that her personality matched that of her maternal aunt and cousins. It was a long-standing family joke about the excitable nature of the female members. “Silly and high-strung the lot of them,” her uncle often quipped.
Annalise reached for the door handle and hopped down before the carriage driver could let down the steps. Her aunt and cousins crowded her, enclosing her in a large, boisterous hug.
“There’s to be a masquerade!” Phoebe announced before even inquiring about Annalise’s well-being or if her trip had been pleasant. “I wanted to go as Anne Boleyn—with my head off. It would have been delightful. But Papa says I must go as a boring shepherdess. What will you be?”
“So many parties this Season,” Aunt Sally cried, repeatedly kissing Annalise on her cheeks. “You shan’t have a single dull moment. Not a one. Oh, but you are so pale. My poor, poor dear, what you must have suffered. I’m sorry I couldn’t visit after the funerals. The children, you know. But I have the perfect potion from my apothecary that will put blooms on your cheeks again. Oh, and the draper received a darling new shipment of fabric from India. We must go tomorrow. We must! There is the most delightful gown featured in The Ladies Mirror.”
“It’s beautiful!” Phoebe agreed. “Mama said that I may have one made up. And you too! Everyone will find it so darling.”
“I thought Papa said that we must be careful taking Annalise to parties because of her reputation,” Shelley said innocently.
“Hush, Shelley!” Phoebe admonished her sister. “You weren’t supposed to say anything. And everyone would have forgotten by now.”
“She’s here. She’s here,” said a male voice in mocking falsetto tones. Annalise glanced up. Her uncle, Harry Sommerville, leaned against the threshold, arms crossed. He was a slender man with slightly receding hair that he brushed forward. He possessed a strong nose and heavy eyelids, which made him appear perpetually bored. “Why don’t you girls let your cousin inside and stop dancing about and clucking like excited, mindless hens on the walk for our neighbors’ entertainment?”
Her aunt laughed. “Ha! Mr. Sommerville is so witty.”
Annalise didn’t see the joke but laughed along to be polite.
“You may as well bring her trunks inside,” he commanded his manservant. “Sally, see to dinner. You girls can catch up on your inane gossip later.”
“Of course, my dearest,” his wife said obediently.
“You there,” Mr. Sommerville addressed Mrs. Bailey, “see to putting away Miss Van Der Keer’s things. Annalise, come to my library after you have freshened up and no longer smell like every coaching inn between here and Exeter.”
* * *
“Sit down, Annalise.” Her uncle pointed to the winged chair in his library. He took his usual chair beside his writing bureau and crossed his legs. He adopted the mocking falsetto tone again. “Oh, Annalise is coming, how she will love to shop. Oh, Annalise is coming, whatever parties shall we attend?” His voice lowered to its normal range as he studied Annalise. “I had no choice but to allow you to return to my home. I would have no peace otherwise. I entrusted you to my wife during your last visit, not realizing the full extent of her irresponsibility to her matronly duties. I did not see the damage of your silly, thoughtless behavior until it was far too late. Hear me, my child, you will not be ill-supervised again. I shan’t have you ruining Phoebe’s chances. Dear God, may I rid myself of one troublesome female.” He paused. “What do you say to me?”
Annalise blinked. “Pardon?”
“You should thank me for kindly giving you a second chance.”
A second chance? She had often contemplated her disastrous Season, which had been fueled by an obsessive love that overwhelmed any reason. Everything had been about Patrick. Nothing else had mattered to her. Back at home in the quiet country, as she’d had hours and hours to think as she replaced her father’s sheets, softened his food, and made up the medicines the physician recommended, she’d wondered if her problem was that she felt more than other people. Maybe her idea of love—all-consuming, frantic with desire, and unending—wasn’t everyone else’s conception. But she still loved Patrick that way, and she couldn’t imagine feeling any less.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I am very happy to be in London again, to be near my cousins.”
“How poorly you deceive, Annalise. You came only to attend balls and shows and to sink your pretty lacy hooks into some poor gentleman, who, up until that point, had been contently swimming about in the sea. What else would you have to talk about? Astronomy? Mathematics?” He chuckled, tickled at his witticism.
Annalise couldn’t explain why, but the image of her father in his invalid chair, sitting in the sunlit garden, filled her mind. In the last years of his life, father and daughter had grown close and spent hours together, talking about botany and his scientific papers—things she’d once found so boring.
She hadn’t realized that she’d sunk so deeply into this gentle memory until she heard her uncle loudly clear his throat. “You, ramshackle girl, have you not heard a word I’ve uttered?”
Annalise glanced up. No, she couldn’t remember a word of her uncle’s lecture, but it didn’t take a far leap of the imagination to speculate. “You needn’t worry, Uncle. I shall not attend balls or parties, and shall make myself content instead with walking in Hyde Park or attending lectures.” In truth, she would be content merely revisiting the places associated with Patrick.
He studied her, as if not expecting the reasoned answer. “Not attend balls? Why must you always upset my household? No, you will attend those balls, so that I may have some small peace in my life. Have mercy, silly girl.”
Annalise stared. Others considered her uncle droll. He prided himself on making the wry observation upon the follies of others, including his own family. She had always laughed along. Now she felt a stab of annoyance at his put-upon cynicism. What had he to be cynical about, after all? She had watched her mother writhe in pain in the last days, begging for relief. She had listened to the minutes tick, tick, tick by for weeks at her father’s deathbed as cancer ravaged him.
She burst out, “Did you know that in Sweden, coveys of partridges will crowd together beneath the snow to keep warm?”
He jerked his head back. “Excuse me?”
“Certain species of cuckoos lay an egg in the nest of other birds, and then the young cuckoo chick hatches first and tosses out the other eggs.”
He stared, one brow raised. “Well,” he said after a moment. “That must have occupied most of your brain.” He made a shooing motion. “There, there, go. I’m assuming from the ear-piercing shrilling when the post arrived that a new La Belle Assemblée or other such rubbish has come. I’m sure it will entertain you and your cousins’ simple minds until dinner.”
Annalise stifled the desire to mention something derogatory concerning her uncle’s mind and the copy of The Rambler on his desk. She quietly rose, crossed to the door, and rested her hand on the door handle. She couldn’t leave yet. She had to know. “Have—have you heard if Mr. Hume is still in India?” She tried to sound casual.
Her uncle hiked a brow, “Still angling for him, old girl?”
“No, I’m—I’m merely curious.”
“Lying ladies are so transparent. No, child, he’s in India, and for my sake, I desire that he will remain there for the duration of your stay, which I hope shall be brief. Perhaps you will find a gentleman who hasn’t the sense to run away from you like the last one.” He chuckled, amused at himself.
She didn’t humor him with a response but turned and walked away. She found Phoebe waiting in the corridor, waving a magazine. “We have received a new La Belle Assemblée. You must see this most darling gown.”
* * *
Dinner at the Sommerville house was a boisterous, giggling affair. The females chatted over each other, holding multiple simultaneous conversations about gowns, bonnet decorations, parties, who had come to call that morning, and who had danced twice at a ball. Their father quietly stabbed his food, his expression pained.
Annalise didn’t recall having so much difficulty swimming in the swirling conversational current three years ago. Now, she struggled to keep one strain of thought in her mind. Had she grown more like her father, turning over one thought like a rock in his hand, quietly examining each facet and fissure, before setting it down and picking up another?
“Annalise, darling, I went through your gowns,” her aunt said. “Why, they are the ones you brought last time.”
“I’m afraid I’ve been in mourning clothes for so long that I hadn’t noticed,” Annalise confessed. She had lost her sense of time. Her parents’ deaths still seemed very recent, but all her mourning clothes felt new, even though they were more than two years old.
“It can never do.” Her aunt dabbed currant jelly on her slice of pork. “We must have new gowns made in haste. I dare not let you out in those clothes. What if someone recognizes them?”
“What if someone recognizes her poor behavior?” her uncle said in a low voice, sliding his insult into the conversation.
Her aunt laughed as if it were a joke, but Annalise felt the prick of the words.
Phoebe continued her recital of upcoming engagements. “We have the masquerade on Thursday. I must spend the entire day working on my costume. And then there’s the Danvers’ ball on Friday.”
“Mr. Sommerville,” his wife said in an imploring tone, “may we use the carriage to go shopping tomorrow?”
“If you promise to stay out of the house for several hours.”
His wife chuckled. “You are so witty, Mr. Sommerville.”
“May I come?” Shelley begged. “I should like new gloves.”
“Of course, my love,” her mother said.
“And we are going to the theater on Saturday,” Phoebe continued.
“Oh, I haven’t been to the theater in ages,” Annalise said. She remembered how she and Patrick had playfully sneaked glances at each other with their opera glasses.
“It’s Love’s Joy and Misery!” Her aunt clapped her hands. “All my friends are talking about it. We simply have to go!”
“Phoebe wants to go because Edgar Williams plays the lead.” Shelley rolled her eyes. “She thinks he is handsome.”
“I do not!” Phoebe cried.
“Well, he is handsome!” her aunt agreed, causing her daughters to giggle behind their hands that her mother would acknowledge another man as handsome. Aunt Sally blushed at her daring. “Of course, he is not as handsome as your papa.”
Uncle Harry glanced heavenward as if to say, Why, Lord, have you saddled me with this lot? and then cut into a parsnip.
“Tell me who are the handsome gentlemen this season,” Annalise said to Phoebe to make conversation. “Whom are all the ladies wild for? Whom shall I set my caps for?”
Phoebe began naming names. Mr. That, Sir This, Lord Who. Her mother inserted annual incomes and estates with each. Naturally, some of the titled gentlemen were above the Sommervilles’ touch, but Phoebe said their names with the wistful look of a young girl who dreamed of capturing the heart of a handsome fairy-tale prince. Phoebe finished her list with, “And the Marquess of Exmore, of course.”
Annalise blinked. Exmore?
Oh, yes, his wife died, she remembered. The marchioness had passed away about the same time as her mother fell ill. He had been so devoted to his wife that, in Annalise’s mind, he remained eternally married. She couldn’t imagine him with a different wife.
Her aunt shrieked, “That... that man!”
Uncle Harry set his fork down. “Phoebe, do not use that man’s name in our decent home.”
“But why?” Phoebe asked.
“I’ve told you before,” Uncle Harry said. “He is not respectable.”
“Pardon?” Annalise burst out with a bark of laughter. Was this a joke? The Marquess of Exmore not respectable? Had the earth changed its rotation? Was winter now summer?
“But... but... he is at all the balls,” Phoebe said.
“Surely, you are in jest,” Annalise said. “Uncle, I cannot believe Lord Exmore to be anything other than a model of propriety.”
Her uncle pointed his fork at her. “Do not question me, foolish girl. I said you may not mention his name at my table. His deeds are not fit for innocent ears.”
Annalise still couldn’t believe they were speaking of the same Exmore she knew. The man who had admonished her for reckless behavior. Who had counseled that one day she would love more wisely and maturely. “That cannot be.”
“He changed after his wife died,” her aunt quietly explained.
“Not another word!” her uncle boomed. “Or you will have to leave the table.”
Silence ensued for several seconds.
Aunt Sally squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. She couldn’t abide silence for very long. “Then... there is the Cornish gentleman who owns a coal mine.”
“I should like a coal mine,” Shelley said and licked the pudding off her spoon.
“I should like to put you in a coal mine,” Phoebe responded.
* * *
The ladies gathered in the drawing room after dinner, where Phoebe regaled Annalise with the plot of every London play for the last three months and descriptions of what the leading ladies wore. Annalise said, “How fascinating,” or, “What a wonderful plot,” or, “What a lovely gown,” at appropriate times, but her mind continued to drift to Exmore.
He had remained a villain in her mind. As if he had been cast a part in a play like the ones Phoebe described, and Annalise had never recast him. She still blamed him for sending Patrick away. Often, in the evenings, when she was exhausted from taking care of her mother or father, she would stare out at the night beyond her window. She could still make out the unextinguished lights from the neighboring village, twinkling over the fields. She would imagine that Patrick never left. That he was beside her, whispering comforting words.
Now she gazed out the window onto Wigmore Street, the sound of Phoebe’s voice muting in her mind. The London fog had settled in that evening. Horses and carriages seemed to emerge from it like ghosts and then disappear again. She remembered how dearly Exmore had professed to love his wife. How worried he had been about the late marchioness that evening. She had felt his deep anxiety and concern, breaking through her own pain, when she had embraced him.
The death of his wife must have destroyed him. What else would cause him to act against his nature?
“And have you decided on your costume, Annalise?”
Annalise glanced up. “Pardon?” She shook her head. “What play are we discussing?”
“Not a play, goose,” Phoebe said. “For the masquerade tomorrow night.”
“I think I shall go as a country girl who forgot her costume. Or perhaps as a young lady whose clothes were in fashion three years ago.”
“No, no, we must come up with something jollier. It’s my very first masquerade. I can barely contain myself, I’m so excited. I do hope something almost wicked happens to me.” Phoebe ran through a list of costume ideas. Annalise didn’t care for any of them. She wanted to ask about Exmore. How did he fall from respectability? What had he done?
* * *
A little after eleven, Annalise retreated to her chamber, a cozy room near the servants’ quarters on the upper floor. There would be no escaping from this room and sneaking away on a rainy night to Exmore’s home. The chamber was small, but she had it to herself. A lush carpet covered the floor, and heavy blue brocade drapes kept out the cold and outside sounds. On one side of the four poster bed was a toilette table and on the other a writing desk. The fire in the grate lit the entire tiny room.
Mrs. Bailey helped her out of her clothes and into her nightgown, all while complaining about the other servants. “Their fancy manners and ways, as if I wasn’t good enough for their filthy city with its black-soot sky. This city is fit for sinners. It’s not for us, miss. And look at this clothespress, miss. A wee church mouse would be hard-pressed to fit his clothes in it. No, we should go to your relatives in Holland like your father wanted, though it would break my English heart.”
“If I go to Holland, you should return home. In fact, if London is not to your pleasing, why not go home?”
“What? I’m not leaving my little girl alone in the world,” Mrs. Bailey said, outraged. “Good night, miss. You are holding up well, you are. I’m proud of you.”
But when the door closed behind her and Annalise was all alone, she felt her strength falter. Mrs. Bailey had put away her clothes and toilet bottles, but she had set the two leather portfolios on the writing desk.
She opened the top one, drew out father’s delicate drawing of Digitalis purpurea, and studied it as the shadows from the fire danced over its surface. Her papa had been a quiet man. He had once told her that some people you knew by their conversation and others by their silence. She hadn’t known what he meant until the last year of his life—that some kinds of silence held much more meaning than words could express.
She carefully let her fingers touch the edges of the image as tears sprang to her eyes. Futile homesickness filled her. When she had given her keys to the new tenants of her childhood home, she had known she would never pass its threshold again. Even if she could, it wouldn’t be her home without her parents. She wished she had tried to know her parents better when they were healthy, rather than waiting until the last months of their lives.
“Annalise.” Phoebe’s head popped around the door. “I had another idea about what you can dress up as for the masquerade. A siren! That would be wonderful.”
Annalise discreetly blinked away her tears before they could fall.
“Yes, then I could go naked and not worry about a costume.”
“Oh, you are very naughty, Cousin,” Phoebe said admiringly.
Annalise studied her cousin. “May I ask you a question, and you needn’t answer it if you feel that I shouldn’t ask it... but I have to know. What has happened to Lord Exmore? I cannot believe he is disrespectable.”
Phoebe’s eyes lit with mischief. She closed herself into the room. “He is the most wicked rake in all of London,” she said in an excited whisper. “The most handsome and the wildest. All the ladies want to tame him. It’s better than anything at the Royal Theatre or Covent Garden. He keeps company with actresses, and there are rumors of fights and deep gambling. Wicked, delicious stuff.”
“You shouldn’t know such things,” Annalise said, but not in an admonishing way.
“No, goose, I’m to pretend that I don’t know such things. Such as a wealthy marquess will always be respectable no matter what Papa says. Every lady speaks of him behind her fan, except in our home because of Papa.”
“But he loved his wife so dearly.”
Phoebe pretended to dramatically faint upon the bed. “Perhaps sorrow has driven him mad.” Then she burst into giggles. “I should hope that a man would love me so much that he would be driven mad with passion for me… You know, like in The Fatal Love of a Maiden?”
“You do realize that Lord Exmore is a real man? He is not an actor.”
“Of course, I do, dear cousin. I’ve seen him at balls. Well, from across the dance floor. I’ve never really talked to him or danced with him. But he is ever so wickedly handsome.”
“I meant he’s made of flesh and bone and warts and has to make water like everyone else. I have never cared for him, but I know that he sincerely loved his wife in a deep way. And his hurt must be true.”
“I should like it very much if he would fall in love with me in a deep way.” Phoebe sighed.
Annalise opened her mouth to try again to get her point across to Phoebe but stopped. Maybe the problem was with Annalise. Perhaps she needed to relax and giggle again and care only about gowns and plays.
Phoebe must have got an inkling of her cousin’s thoughts. “My dear cousin, you are far too serious. You must be happy again. Go to the masquerade as a siren but in a gown. That will be great fun.” She bounced off the bed. “I know you are worried that people may cut you. But that was a long time ago. Don’t listen to Papa. Everything will be jolly. You will see.” She hugged Annalise. “I’m so happy you are here. We shall have a lovely time shopping tomorrow.” Phoebe made a silly little dance out of exiting the room.
Annalise crawled into bed. She was exhausted but couldn’t drift off. She waited until the entire house was silent with sleep, and then she slid out of her bed, opened the other portfolio, and drew out the contents: letters and letters to Patrick that she had never sent. She flipped through the pages, glancing at the words she had written through the years.
Today my mother stared up from her pillow. “I’m going to die,” she told me sadly. We have known this, but now she is resigned. My heart is broken.
Spring is here. The wildflowers are in bloom, so I took my paints to the field. As I painted, I wondered what landscape you saw. I wondered about everything you had ever done since leaving England and if I were so far in your mind as to be forgotten.
I sat Papa up in bed and read to him from Mr. Visser’s new volume, which arrived from Holland today. Papa complimented my Dutch, which had vastly improved. Remember how you teased me that Dutch was the most unromantic-sounding language?
Papa has passed from this world, and although I am alive, I feel great swaths of my heart have died too. Did you feel so lost and alien when you arrived in India?
And the last she had written:
I am coming back to London. The last place I remember being wildly happy. I know you are still in India, but somehow, I feel closer to you in London. Isn’t that silly? I wonder what I will say or do should I see you again?
She turned the last letter and dipped her pen in the ink.
I was mistaken. London is not the same. The memories remain, yet I am different. Can you ever return to the person you were before? I must find a way to make her come back. Can I find a way to make you come back?