But I know this exercise is pointless. Because how could I have refused him? Lying there as I did, on my hospital bed, bandaged and helpless, while he pressed my hand reverently and begged me to marry him. This man who had restored the promise of dawn to my life. This man who, in my blackest hour, injured nearly beyond repair, had not abandoned me but had instead brought me back to life. How could I not trust him?
Though my memory of those weeks inside the American Hospital in Neuilly remains dim and indistinct, even to this day, I do remember how this most seductive thought began to unfurl inside my brain at that moment, as Simon spoke. How a heady sensation overtook me, as if I’d been looking at a painting upside down all this time, and now, as if by enchantment, it turned right side up. And the revelation was more beautiful than I could have dreamed, if I had ever known how to dream such things.
I thought—yes, my God, I actually thought this—I will be safe now.
“Yes,” I said.
His eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”
“Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
“My God.” He kissed my hand. Wrapped it up between his two palms. “Splendid. My God. Say it again.”
“Yes!” I tried to laugh, but my ribs hurt and it ended in a wince.
“Careful!”
“Yes. I will marry you, Simon Fitzwilliam, you dear and foolish man. I can’t imagine why you’re asking. But if you’re so stupid as to want to marry me—”
“Only if you want to, Virginia. Only if you’re as stupid as I am, as splendidly and marvelously stupid—”
“I am! I—oh.”
He shook his finger. “No more of that laughing, Miss Fortescue. I won’t have you setting yourself back.”
“Yes, sir. No more laughing.”
“You have only to think about getting better, about healing this precious body of yours. Your head and your ribs. This left arm I saved personally from amputation at the hands of that damned pompous surgeon. That’s all you need to concern yourself with, at present, until it’s time to find your wedding dress and choose a bridesmaid. You’re to leave everything to me and take care of yourself, for once. Your own dear self.”
He kissed my hand—the right one, not the left, which was still stiff in its massive plaster cast—once on each knuckle, and then he turned my fingers over and kissed my palm. His short hair bristled from his scalp. When he was finished, he lifted his head, laid my hand against his cheek, and said, “You are to have faith in me, is that clear? Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”
I remember how I smiled at his earnest expression. The warm echo of his words. The sunshine of his voice, burning away the last of my doubt.
I remember how I touched his upper lip with my thumb and replied, “Perfectly clear.”
November 28, 1921
Darling V,
I do wonder sometimes if you shall ever read these letters. Whether I’ve been foolish to keep them back from their envelopes: foolish and rather vainly hopeful that you might, one day, find the courage or the forgiveness or the simple curiosity to seek them out. But I well remember how you treated my letters once, when you thought me guilty of another crime, and if there’s any chance at all that I might, by this method, preserve a record of my true thoughts for you . . . well, I suppose I have always known my chances were long, where you were concerned. That I was risking my all for a reward too bright even to contemplate.
Or maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the act of writing is enough. I don’t know. I do know that it helps me, somehow. When the day is long & weary, and everything seems to be falling apart—as if you’re replacing a book on a bookshelf, & another one tumbles to the ground just as soon as you’ve fixed the first one, and then you put that one back and another one crashes down—when, as I say, life seems impossible & insupportable, I find comfort in scribbling these lines to you. Whether or not you see them. Whether or not you read them. Almost—but not quite—whether or not you care.
But you must care, mustn’t you? If you didn’t care, I should have been served divorce papers by now. Each day, you see, I tremble when the post arrives, just in case there should be some dreadful legal-looking envelope from some sort of New York firm, informing me that my wife no longer wishes to be my wife.
And each day, I am reprieved, & believe me, my darling, I am fully grateful for this reprieve. You can’t imagine. Today, for example, I have been up to my ears in the accounts, instead of tramping about my orchards as I prefer. The reason? I am contemplating a change in business strategy. The trees returned a decent harvest last winter; the ships are running out full and returning—well, let us say they are returning with some valuable cargo indeed, cargo that I believed would set us up beautifully for the coming year, enough to get ahead at last. But while revenues are tumbling like—well, like ripe fruit, if you don’t mind the phrase, ripe fruit into our waiting coffers, they are going out again in the same abundant manner. This valuable cargo of ours has attracted so many strings, so many distasteful connections, so many unsavory characters, I am determined to wash my hands of it and return to what I do best. The long, slow journey, instead of the quicker one. As I said, I don’t mean to be tedious, and I expect the less you know about all this, the better.
I wonder if I can live up to him. Your father, I mean. Whether, in all my striving, I can ever give you anything like the comfort & luxury he has provided. I admit I am jealous of him. Jealous of his riches & the genius that made him rich. It seems that however I try, however abundantly I call my orchards to give forth their fruit, it’s never enough. The growing of fruit, I suppose, is a far more commonplace genius than the invention of industrial gadgets.
On that note, I am off to do what my meager talents allow. Coax my trees unto fruitfulness.
Ever your own,
S.F.
Chapter 22
London, March 1919
By the time I married Simon Fitzwilliam, on the last day of the following March, at ten o’clock in the morning, my bones had knit and my eyes no longer swam when I read. I wore a new suit of pale gray and a matching hat of gray felt, though my shoes were old. For good luck, I told myself.