There was a brief, stunned silence.
“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
“No. He’s not—as you know, as I’ve said before, he’s suspicious of outsiders. We weren’t allowed to make friends, at least the kind of friends we could invite home. So I didn’t know how to explain. How to make him understand that you could be trusted. I thought he might forbid me to marry you. Order me home at once.”
“So you went ahead and married me anyway?”
I tried to laugh. “I did once hear that it’s far better to ask forgiveness than permission.”
“Yes, but that’s . . .” He crushed the spent cigarette against the doorframe and tossed it into the draft. “Marriage is rather a larger matter, you know. Are you saying you haven’t mentioned my existence at all? What about your sister? Surely you’ve told her.”
“No. I was afraid she would blurt something out. She can be impulsive.”
“My God.” He grasped the brim of his hat and worked it up and down against his forehead. “I suppose he’ll be furious at us both.”
“I don’t know. That’s why—”
“What’s that?”
I raised my voice, which had fallen into hoarseness. “Why I thought we might make our home here, at least for now. Live here and send for Sophie.”
“I see.”
“You don’t approve.”
“I just think it’s a bit shortsighted, that’s all. You’re not afraid he might—well, cut you off?”
“Cut me off?”
“Leave you without a penny. Or whatever it is you have in America.”
“Pennies. I wouldn’t care about that. I couldn’t take his money, anyway.”
“What? Why the devil not?”
“We can make our own fortune.”
“You make it sound so easy. Have you ever tried to get your hands on a decent sum of money? Enough to set yourself up in reasonable comfort? It’s bloody difficult. It’s going to be even more difficult now, with the war over, and everybody out of work.”
“I’d rather be poor than take Father’s money.”
Simon lifted his hand back to his forehead and rubbed his thumb against his skin, just beneath the brim of his hat. “Would you, now,” he said, so softly that I had to strain to hear him over the noise of the engine. “May I ask why?”
The road grew rough, winding about a set of small hills. The draft whistled past our ears. Simon slowed the car and put both hands back on the wheel, gripping it with such intensity that his knuckles seemed to burst beneath the brown leather of his gloves.
Tell him, I thought. Tell him why you’re afraid.
Tell him the thing you haven’t told anyone. The thing you haven’t told Sophie.
The thing you haven’t even told yourself.
I stared at those hands, at the tight bones of his knuckles, and said, “There’s no reason. I suppose it’s just because I want a new life, too. I want a fresh start. A fresh start with you and Sophie. That’s all.”
I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget the sight of Penderleath, glimpsed between a pair of overgrown elms as we crept around the final curve of the drive. Fitzwilliam Manor, Simon had called it, in his jaded voice, but I thought it was beautiful in its damp, crumbling humility.
“I see they’ve given up on the north wing,” Simon said. A few drops of rain spat upon the windscreen, and he reached for the dashboard.
“What’s in the north wing?”
“The nursery, for one thing. And the billiards.”
“But I thought Lydia’s money was supposed to save the house.”
“Yes. Well. As it turned out, there wasn’t so much money as my parents hoped. The fortune was all cleverly tied up by the lawyers. And her father lost a few ships to the damned U-boats, apparently, and required the capital himself. A thing he never troubled himself to mention, of course. We only discovered the extent of the mess after his death.” He paused to switch gears. “And then came the divorce proceedings.”
“Oh, God.”
“Not your fault.”
“But in the eyes of your parents . . .”
Simon slammed his foot on the brake pedal. The Wolseley skidded to a stop, rear wheels sliding along the mud. He turned and caught the back of my head. “You are not to care what my parents think,” he said fiercely. “You are not to believe a word they say, do you hear me? Leave them to me. I know how to manage them.”
“Are they really so awful?”
“They’re not awful. They’re only . . . they’re bitter. And rather furious with me.”
“Then why are we here? Why not wait?”
“God knows.” His hand turned gentle and stroked my cheek. “Maybe just to show you what it could be, one day, when it’s ours. The way I’ve dreamed it. Central heating and sound roofs and bricks all repointed. Fresh paint and new furniture and children running about. And love, Virginia. Just imagine it.”
I looked over his shoulder at the ancient gray dimensions of Penderleath, the comfortable jumble of Palladian symmetry and Jacobean fretwork, all softened up by age and weather. “I think it’s perfect the way it is.”
He barked and put the car back in gear. “That’s because you haven’t been inside.”
Nobody came out to greet us as we pulled up in the exact center of the drive, before the pilloried entrance. The gravel was patchy and ragged with weeds. Simon switched off the engine and went around to open my door.
“What’s the matter?” I said, touching his chin.
“Nothing. Come along, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Into the lion’s den.”
He led me around the car and up the crumbling steps. “I suppose I ought to carry you over the threshold, but it’s not really ours yet. Nor especially homelike, for that matter. Still . . .” He flung open the door, grasped my waist, and swooped me inside. His voice boomed about the entrance hall. “Mother! Father! The prodigal returns.”
“Don’t joke,” I whispered.
“I’m not joking.”
No answering voice reached us from inside. The atmosphere was cold and damp and uninhabited, smelling of mildew and something else, sweet and slightly rancid. Simon released my waist and gathered up my hand inside his. “I’d offer to take your coat, my dear, but I daresay you’ll need it.”
“But where is everyone?”
“Sitting resolutely in the conservatory, I imagine. Wrapped in old furs. Drinking tea and setting their teeth against us. I shall have to work every wile to thaw them out.”
“Your brother said you were good at that. Getting your parents on your side.”
“Well, they’re very much like children themselves, you know. Utterly incapable of dealing with practicalities, like the size of the overdraft and the necessity for paying one’s tradesmen. Buying coal over buying new evening frocks. Improving one’s estate as an investment for the future.”