Chapter Seventeen
INA SAT WITH her hands folded in her lap, trying to be perfect. After their first encounter, Lady Sophia had been cool but mercifully distant with her except for little snipes about Ina’s manners, accent, or interests. Most of these glanced off Ina, and she was determined not to rise to the others.
What everyone knew and yet no one said directly was that Ina wasn’t up to the role of being the baronet’s wife Lady Sophia thought she should be. In her place should’ve been Grace, who moved with an elegance befitting her name, receiving callers with a soft word and quietly submitting to the hours of needlework Lady Sophia toiled over every day. Lady Sophia had even relinquished some of the responsibilities for running Oak Park’s massive household to her favored daughter-in-law.
Though it might be her right, Ina didn’t bring her complaints to Gavin. She didn’t relish the thought of taking over the management of a manor house she didn’t want, and every day saw Gavin sequestered in his study with Chase. The last thing he needed now was his wife tearing in to complain about his mother.
What she needed was to get out of Oak Park. She told herself over and over that Gavin had work here, but it took every ounce of her resolve not to beg him to return home. She missed her Edinburgh, but it was more than that. This grand house looking out over the sea to the west and sweeping green hills to the east should’ve been beautiful but it couldn’t shake the deep, bone-chilling cold that hung about it, as though the happiness had been sucked out of it long ago. It made her want to rebel, filling the hall with laughter and throwing open the doors to someone other than the solemn-faced, black-clad members of this miserable household.
Just a little while longer—that’s what he’d promised her—a few days and he’d conclude his business. Then they could return to their life in Edinburgh. They’d visit Oak Park, a home neither of them wanted, only when absolutely necessary.
For now, she just had to survive another interminable afternoon in the drawing room with Lady Sophia and Grace.
From her seat on a sofa near the window, Ina offered her sister-in-law a little smile, but Grace hardly met her eyes. The poor woman looked miserable, and although she never protested at Lady Sophia’s ridiculous criticism, Ina would’ve pulled her into a hug to comfort her if she wasn’t half convinced Grace would break into pieces at such an outrageous display of affection. She’d asked Gavin for guidance about how she might approach her sister-in-law, but he’d clammed up immediately. She supposed he worried that his brother’s widow resented that it was Gavin assuming the title rather than Richard.
Stifling a sigh, she picked up the sketch pad she’d armed herself with in anticipation of the long stretches of silence that personified the gaps in the afternoons that were not filled with callers. She flipped the bound pages open to a blank spot and picked up a pencil she’d sharpened in her room that morning.
With quick strokes, she outlined the shape of a jaw up to a set of cheekbones. Her pencil whispered over the page, lending a soothing meditative quality to the work. She hadn’t set out to draw anything in particular, but a face was appearing, so she added shading to bring out a man’s chin and defined a divot in the center of it. A pair of lips were followed by the slope of a nose.
Her thoughts wandered to Hero and Leander as she added two long lines for a neck. The days she needed to finish her sculpture were ticking by. She had just six weeks before the deadline for entries passed, and she still had detail work and polishing to complete. At the moment, her tragic lovers still looked vague, more like suggestions rather than fully fleshed-out people.
“You’re drawing Gavin,” said Grace from over Ina’s shoulder.
She jumped, her pencil skittering over the page and leaving a light lead mark on the upper right corner.
“I’m sorry,” said Grace, turning quickly.
“No, please stay,” Ina said, patting the spot next to her in a gesture of goodwill. “Why do you think it’s Gavin?”
“His jaw is quite square, and he has that cleft in his chin.” Grace traced her finger over the spot.
Oh. Without meaning to, Ina had begun sketching her husband. She hadn’t even been thinking about him. Not really. And yet now that Grace pointed it out she didn’t know how she could have imagined the sketch was of anyone else.
“It’s unmistakably Gavin even if you haven’t filled in the eyes,” said Grace. “He has wonderful eyes.”
“That’s easy enough to fix,” Ina said.
With a few quick pencil lines, she filled in his deep-set eyes and the strong set of brows that topped them.
“There. That looks just like him,” said Grace. “Does he approve of you sculpting?”
“He must be horrified at the sight of a woman wielding tools like a caveman,” said Lady Sophia from her sofa.
“No,” Ina said sharply. “I believe he’s rather proud that his wife has an occupation she finds fulfilling.”
“An occupation?” laughed Grace. “Surely you mean a hobby.”
Ina tried to remind herself that Grace didn’t mean any harm by it. She was simply unused to the thought of a woman who considered the pursuit of art a serious endeavor. In Grace’s world, women didn’t toil at anything.
“Gavin is very used to seeing me at work,” she said. “Before we were married, he used to treat my studio as a way station between my father’s study and his bachelor apartment.”
“Were you alone?” Lady Sophia asked, horrified.
“The servants were just in the next room, and the kitchen was just down the hall. We always kept the door open,” Ina said, annoyed at having to defend herself to her mother-in-law. There had been nothing scandalous about Gavin visiting her while she worked, but this woman was making it seem dirty.
“I cannot believe your father and mother would’ve allowed such an arrangement,” said Lady Sophia.
“My mother died when I was young, so she can hardly object,” Ina said.
Grace squirmed in her seat, but Lady Sophia only narrowed her eyes. “Your father then.”
“He takes a rather enlightened view of friendship between the sexes,” she said, although really her father had hardly noticed.
The dowager sniffed and turned back to her needlework, effectively ending the conversation.
“Have you ever seen someone carve before?” Ina asked Grace, trying to move beyond her mother-in-law’s ugliness.
Grace shook her head.
“I’d be delighted if you’d stay with us in Edinburgh for a time,” she continued. “I can show you what it is that I do. Perhaps you might try your hand at sculpting too.”
“She most certainly will not,” said Lady Sophia from across the room, where she sat embroidering a pillowcase. “The very thought of traveling when her husband has been dead less than two weeks.”
Ina’s cheeks burned more from anger than embarrassment. She understood that the rules of mourning were strict. Young as she might have been, she could recall the seemingly endless number of stiff black crepe dresses her nurse had outfitted her in the year after her mother had died. Yet Grace wouldn’t be a freshly widowed woman forever, and there was no harm in giving a grieving woman something to look forward to.
“I only mentioned a visit because I was looking to the future,” said Ina with a glance at Grace. “The distant future.”
“Perhaps a trip to London, when you and Gavin open up the house for the season,” said Grace hopefully.
“We don’t have plans to do the season,” she said.
“Of course not this year,” said Grace, “but once we’re out of mourning.”
“I’m sorry, you misunderstand me. Gavin and I aren’t interested in doing the season any year.”
“What?” Lady Sophia asked. “Whyever not?”
“We’re perfectly happy in Edinburgh.”
“But the house,” gasped Grace. It was the most emotional display Ina had seen from her since arriving at Oak Park. “There are certain expectations of the baronet.”
“Appearances must be maintained,” said Lady Sophia.
“Expectations and appearances have never been of much concern to Gavin or myself,” Ina said firmly. “It may’ve been the habit of Gavin’s father or Richard to go to London, but it will not be ours.”
Grace bolted up out of her seat, her cheeks red. “I was skeptical when you arrived at Oak Park, but I was willing to overlook some of your eccentricities. Now I see you’ve turned Gavin’s head and would have him shirk his responsibilities here. He deserves a better wife than you.”
My imperfections, she corrected herself.
Turning to their mother-in-law, Grace said, “Please excuse me. I’ll take supper in my room this evening. I find I have a splitting headache.”
The door thumped shut behind Grace, punctuating Ina’s astonishment. She’d suspected from the start that she’d never be close companions with her sister-in-law, but she certainly hadn’t expected such an attack. That was Lady Sophia’s purview.
Her sister-in-law couldn’t have known how precisely her words jabbed at Ina’s worries. Ina knew Gavin deserved a better wife than her, but instead she’d landed him in this mess with her. In Edinburgh it had seemed just possible that they could stumble through this lifetime together, finding a happiness in each other’s company. Here in Ashington, however, it was like having a bright light shone on all of their imperfections.
Ina’s mother-in-law had set her needlework in her lap to give the scene that had unfolded her full attention. A smug smile sat on the older woman’s lips.
“You don’t understand the first thing about what’s going on in this house,” said Lady Sophia.
“No,” said Ina, pulling her shoulders back. “But whose fault is that? You’ve made no secret of the fact that you resent my presence here.”
“I don’t just resent your presence,” said Lady Sophia with a laugh. “I resent everything about you, including your marriage.”
“Then I suggest bringing the issue to your son. He saw fit to marry me,” she said.
“Men often don’t know what’s best for them,” said Lady Sophia. “You know, I don’t delude myself into thinking Grace is truly mourning my son’s death.”
“What has this to do with Gavin and me?” asked Ina, wary at the sharp change of conversation.
“Richard was her husband, yes,” Lady Sophia continued, “but not the man she loved. Grace only married him because he was my husband’s heir.”
“But why would she do that if she loved another?” she asked.
The dowager shrugged one elegant shoulder. “She was forced to see that Richard was the best match she could make.”
An odd sensation settled in Ina: an uncomfortable kinship with the sister-in-law who’d just attacked her. She too had been pushed into a marriage she hadn’t wanted, only, despite her fears, hers hadn’t collapsed. Remarkably, she and Gavin seemed to be growing stronger. She’d never felt so connected to him, never shared so much of herself. She knew his past, and he knew her ambitions. She wanted to be the only person for him. The one who comforted him, who challenged him, who loved him.
A lump of emotion caught in her throat. Love. It was at once too strong and too weak a word to explain how she felt for him. She’d loved him as a friend for years, but now she was falling for him and there was nothing she could do about it.
Love was still too frightening a prospect—love risked everything: their friendship, her heart, everything. And so she kept it bottled up inside of her, hoping he’d never know what was in her heart.
“I’m sorry for Grace,” said Ina.
Lady Sophia sneered. “Grace made her own choices. No one is ever completely innocent in these sorts of stories.”
“What happened?”
“Grace’s family is the Cleverlys,” said the dowager. “Their land lies next to Oak Park, and it was always the intention of Mr. Cleverly and Sir Henry to join the two properties and unite the families, but Grace foolishly entangled herself with a young man one summer. Richard had the good sense to sit back and wait for the whole episode to fade away, but the young man was persistent. He insisted that he wanted to marry Grace, but when she was presented with the reality that he could not support her without the approval of his family—which they would not give—she opted to marry Richard.”
Something about the way Lady Sophia was relishing this story made Ina’s blood run cold.
“It would seem Grace still has some cunning in her,” the woman continued. “Just like you.”
“I beg your pardon?” The conversation had once again doubled back and become about Ina.
“Don’t think that I don’t have friends in Edinburgh who haven’t noticed how you schemed to entrap my son,” Gavin’s mother hissed, the hatred in her eyes unmistakable.
“Entrap him?” She hadn’t asked Sir Kier to attack her, just as she hadn’t asked for Mrs. Sullivan’s maid to overhear them in such a compromising position. But his mother was right about one thing: Gavin had been a victim too. He’d been the one forced to carry her back to respectability, compromising his own happiness and any future he might have had with another woman. A woman he actually loved.
Like the woman in the letters. He’d reassured her that he no longer felt anything for the woman he’d written them to, but, used as a weapon like this, the letters could hardly have done more damage.
“You circled him for years and snared him when you finally had the chance,” said her mother-in-law.
“I can assure you, that is not at all what happened,” said Ina.
“Just think, using Gavin to cover up your consorting with other men.”
“I don’t consort. I never consorted,” she bit out.
“And then there’s the matter of your so-called art.”
Lady Sophia had lobbed a direct hit straight to Ina’s most vulnerable spot. She could withstand blow after blow about her character. She was, after all, the daughter of Edinburgh’s most notorious flirt, and she knew people talked about her behind her back. But her art? That would always feel deeply personal.
“What’s wrong with my sculpting?” she asked, her voice dangerously low.
Her mother-in-law either didn’t hear the implied warning there or chose to ignore it. “The very idea of a woman carving stone! Don’t think that I haven’t seen all of those nude statues people claim are art. It’s positively scandalous.”
There was nothing scandalous about the human body. The form and function of it were beautiful. She’d already known that before her marriage, but Gavin had shown her entirely new ways her body could arch and twist. She’d reveled in learning every inch of him, and savored as he did the same to her. Never would she apologize for any of that.
“I’m sorry you don’t approve of me,” Ina said, “but I refuse to be brought to heel by a woman like you. I came here with no thought but to be a source of comfort to you, although I now see that was a lost cause if ever there was one.”
Lady Sophia sniffed. “I will not seek comfort in the woman who would take my title and my home.”
“I have no intention of taking your home from you,” Ina said firmly.
“But you will,” said the older woman stiffly. “The dowager must move from Oak Park to Elmhurst Cottage to make way for the new baronet and his wife.”
Ina nearly laughed at the thought of making Oak Park her permanent residence. She’d never survive out here in the country, cut off from so much in this wretched, cold house that had seen such unhappiness. There was none of the bustle of Edinburgh, the carriages clattering along cobbled streets, the vendors hawking their wares along the Royal Mile, the trains steaming in and out of Waverley Station. Ina thrived on the constant churn of excitement and progress.
And then there was the matter of her people. She might be labeled eccentric in Edinburgh, but at least she had company. Even in her own little circle of Bohemians, there were Lana, Christine, and Anne. They were all unique and ambitious. They understood her.
Who would understand her out here in Ashington?
“I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t want any of this,” Ina said with a shake of her head.
“Preposterous,” said Lady Sophia. “Every woman wants a title and a grand house. You’ll be respected across the county.”
“I don’t want it,” Ina repeated. She gathered up her sketchbook and jammed her pencil behind her ear. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some letters to write.”
She was halfway across the room when her mother-in-law stopped her with a single question: “Don’t you want to know the rest of Grace’s story?”
Drat. Of course she did.
“Fine,” she said, clutching the sketchbook to her chest and resolving to leave the moment the story was done.
Something dangerous flashed in the Dowager Lady Barrett’s eyes. “Richard proposed to Grace first. She didn’t accept him initially. She was rather romantic at the time and insisted she’d never marry Richard even though she’d long been intended for him, but her parents sat her down and laid out clearly what her life would be like as the wife of a poor man. There would be no more seasons in London. No more French dresses. No more summers bathing by the seaside or balls or invitations to house parties. Her life would always be harder.
“Then Richard went to Newcastle and purchased a necklace for Grace. Seven perfect sapphire teardrops hanging from a collar of diamonds. He presented them to her, and when the young man found out, he was furious. He asked Grace if she would marry him even though he had few prospects. Instead, Grace accepted Richard and his sapphires, choosing wealth and her parents’ favor over the possibility of love.”
Lady Sophia was right. No one was innocent in this story. Grace had turned the young man away for a collar of precious jewels. The Cleverlys had been cruel. Richard had been opportunistic. The young man had been idealistic. And now no one had a happy ending to their story.
“I’m sorry for Grace,” said Ina. “I’m sorry for the loss of your son. I’m sorry for the young man. It sounds as though no one’s story ended happily.”
Lady Sophia smiled cruelly. “The young man’s certainly didn’t. His name was Gavin. Your husband.”
Ina took a stumbling step back. Grace. Grace was the woman from Gavin’s past. Grace must have been the one he’d written those letters to. Grace was the one he’d wanted.
“Gavin was willing to forsake his family and his prospects for her. Isn’t that funny that your husband once loved his sister-in-law so much he was willing to throw away everything for her? I believe he loves her still, if eyes can be trusted,” said Lady Sophia.
“I don’t believe you,” Ina murmured, half in a daze. “He told me about an old love, but he has no affection for her any longer.”
“Then why didn’t he prepare you before you came here? If he truly didn’t harbor feelings for Grace, it would’ve been nothing to him.”
“His one thought was to race here and take up his responsibilities,” Ina said.
“Gavin knows he’ll never be half the man Richard was, and having you by his side will only drag him down even further. You’re a stone around his neck. Unless you cut him free, he’ll drown,” said Lady Sophia.
Ina had to get out of this room. Out of this wretched house. There had to be somewhere she could go to rid herself of this toxic air that threatened to suffocate her.
But she wasn’t going to let the woman get the parting shot.
“You may think you can bully me and my husband, but one day you will go too far. One day you’ll see just how great a man he is, and you’ll understand what it is to cross those he loves.”
“He doesn’t love you,” Lady Sophia spat.
“Maybe not, but I can assure you that all he holds for you is the contempt you deserve.”
And with that, she stormed out of the room before Lady Sophia could see the tears glistening in her eyes.