Chapter 34

The following days, busy as they were, found their own rhythm. Rufus—accompanied, when he would permit it, by Mr. Smith—was mostly occupied with the estate itself. Unlike Belle, who had been educated, through nobody’s fault but her own, haphazardly, he had been raised with the expectation of governance, proving himself, yet again, a superlatively useful husband. Best of all, though, he was a discursive one, more than willing to spend his evenings going through everything they were doing, and drawing out her own ideas, until Belle either understood or was too bored to care, as turned out to be the case, for example, with soil aeration. In return, she continued to give something she had not given so bounteously for a long time: her trust. Watched him sleeken beneath it like a well-pampered cat.

Her attempts to manage the household were, at best, a work in progress. But then so was the household. The previous housekeeper had left meticulous notes, which Belle spent her afternoons poring over, tracking expenditures over time, incomings, outgoings, everything that was required to keep even a relatively small manor house from falling apart at the seams or collapsing into its own equally small moat. While she had no natural head for figures, she soon discovered she did not precisely need one—there was no great mystery to neatly aligned columns of numbers; she just had to care enough to pay attention, and she had never before had motivation to care. This, however, was her house now, and it needed her. And, at some point, it would need flour. Coal. Fresh candles.

She could not tell if it was amusing or simply laughable that she had spent most of her life in pursuit of the right adventure, the one that would teach her who she was, or who she was supposed to be, and all she had truly been looking for was a way to come home. It was the most conventional of endings for someone who had once intended to be a heroine, but it felt hard-won nonetheless.

Deep in her notes and numbers, she was oblivious to the general tumult of the house, and it was not until Hannah stuck her head round the door to tell her she had a visitor that she even realised there’d been a knock on the door.

“A visitor?” she repeated, not having expected anyone.

Hannah nodded. “A clergyman.”

“Urgh. Really?” Her heart sank. “Isn’t that typical? I’ve barely been in residence a week. I suppose there’s a church roof in need of repair, or he wants to lecture me on my womanly duties or something.”

“No, no,” Hannah told her. “It’s not the local feller. He’s actually quite decent. Wouldn’t come sniffing around unless he was sure he’d be welcome.”

“You mean, there’s a strange clergyman on my doorstep?”

“In the hallway.”

“I suppose you’d better send him up.”

Sweeping her skirts in lieu of a curtsy, Hannah departed. That left Belle with a scant few minutes to discover just how unsuitable her environs were for entertaining. She had set herself up temporarily in the great hall, spreading her ledgers across an old oak dower chest that she was using as a table. But with the rest of the furniture still covered, and the walls bare of their paintings and the tapestries, it was a hollow room, a cold room, its flourishes—like the stained glass and the great Jacobean chimneypiece—reduced to mere relics of their former grandeur. She made a futile attempt to arrange the ledgers in a more orderly fashion, then rose, in the hope it would settle her nerves. There was an odd feeling to the whole situation, as though she had herself been caught naked.

The door opened for a second time, admitting her visitor. A little taller than average height, with no particularly striking characteristics, dressed sombrely in black as befit his profession, his appearance should probably have alleviated her anxieties. And yet it did not.

He came forward, his eyes darting quick as beetles here and there about the room before they settled upon her. “Lady Comewithers?”

Forcing her lips into a polite smile, she managed not to step back. “You have the advantage of me.”

“It is true, then?” he asked, either unconcerned about any advantage he might possess or determined to retain it.

“Is what true?”

His eyes swept her as they had her surroundings, cool, glistening, and evaluative. “That he married.”

“Why would you address me as Lady Comewithers if you were in doubt?”

“It was not for your fortune,” he said, with another flick of his gaze.

Abstractly Belle rather admired his talent for ignoring her. In less abstract terms, she thought she might dislike him. “No,” she agreed.

His lips, which were full and might—in a different face, at a different time, or had they belonged to a different person—have carried a certain sensuality, curled into an unchristian sneer. “Nor for your person.”

She had been in error. She did not dislike him. She despised him. The truth was, he had the rudiments of a handsome man about him, but there was something about him that felt ... stagnant. A pond at midsummer, viscous with algae. A fig, red raw and overripe, splitting from its skin. “Perhaps,” she murmured, “we should forbear commenting on each other’s persons.”

Once again, he disregarded her. “I would see him.”

She lifted her brows curiously. “Would you?”

“Madam”—now something thwarted stirred heavily in his eyes—“do not trifle with me. Where is he?”

On principle, she wanted to fight him over every word. But it would have achieved little. “Out.” And then, instinctively apprehensive of riling him further, she hurried on. “I don’t know exactly where. The south-west pasture, possibly.”

He stepped past her to look through the window, his hands clasped behind him in that “I believe I own everything” fashion that certain gentlemen seemed to naturally gravitate towards.

“Why are you here?” she asked, when it became clear he had no intention of turning back.

For a long moment, he did not answer, and she began to wonder if he would say anything at all. “Is it not obvious.”

“Why now, then?”

At last, she had his attention. “What do you mean?”

“Have you not had many previous opportunities to see—” She broke off abruptly. She would not share anything of Rufus with her visitor. “To see Sir Horley?”

“That is no business of yours.”

Feeling a little more in control, Belle sat down on the edge of the chest she’d been working at, jauntily crossing one leg over the other. “As you wish.”

As she had hoped, this seemed to spur her guest to further disclosure.

“I come,” he said, “when it is significant. When he has need of me.”

“Now that is assuredly not my business.”

He stared at her.

She smirked.

“Spare me your vulgar insinuations. I have known him far longer than you have, and I know him far better than you ever will. Who do you think he will turn to, when this fancy passes, when you bore him or disgust him or demand too much of him?”

Belle let an insolent finger rest lightly against her jaw. “It was very good of you to travel all this way to insult me.”

Silence lay between them, as thick as the dust motes pirouetting sapphire, jade, and gold in the light that streamed through the stained glass windows. “I warned you,” said the visitor, his brows knit in an unbecoming frown, “not to trifle with me.”

“Or what?” asked Belle curiously.

“You think me a provincial clergyman, perhaps? But I am a powerful man, an influential man—”

“Do not ,” Belle cut him off, “start that nonsense with me. I have had it up to here with men telling me how important they are.”

“But”—a note of mild panic touched his voice—“I am. My patroness—”

“I don’t want to hear about your fucking patroness. Besides, what would you tell her? That you don’t like the wife of a man you have likely committed prosecutable acts upon but are too cowardly to be with?”

“It’s ... it’s not like that. I have a calling .”

“A calling to a safe, comfortable life, you mean.” She snorted. “And, believe me, you do look very comfortable.”

He drew in a sharp, outraged breath, and she waited, a little intrigued to see what he might say in a temper. To her disappointment, however, he seemed to calm, his mouth shaping itself into something malicious. “Do you think you can make him want you? Is that what this is about?”

With a hand pressed to her heart, she did her best to mime shocked distress. “Are you saying I can’t?”

“He’ll never love you, Lady Comewithers. He’s not made that way. Your marriage is nothing but a sham, and that’s all it will ever be.”

“Here’s the thing about my marriage.” Setting both feet back on the floor, Belle leaned over her own knees. “If I had my way, Sir Horley would never trouble himself with you again. You’re complacent, self-righteous, and hypocritical, and I’m very much getting the sense that you’re dull in bed.”

“How dare—”

“More to the point, I think you enjoy keeping him on the outskirts of your life. You get to look after your own well-being without ever having to think about his, knowing you can call him back for an illicit thrill whenever you chafe against your respectable life, knowing he’ll come because he’s the better man and—for whatever reason that is your own to keep—he cares about you.”

Once again, it seemed like her visitor was mustering himself to speak.

And, once again, Belle did not give him the opportunity. “But,” she went on, “fortunately for you, it is not up to me. Because—and here is the real truth of our marriage that you believe you have so incisively discerned—who Sir Horley chooses to love is none of my business. Who Sir Horley chooses to fuck is none of my business. Who Sir Horley chooses to forgive is none of my business. In other words, you are none of my business.”

“Then—”

“Unless”—she whisked a palm through the air—“you are of a mind to become part of our lives, in which case there will be no more of”—her next gesture encompassed the whole of him—“ this . Posturing and spite and selfishness. I will welcome you, whoever you are, for his sake, but make no mistake. I do not like you. I am not pleased with you. I am unimpressed by you. And so you enter our home as a rich man enters the kingdom of heaven, do you understand? On your fucking knees.”

From the doorway came the sound of a single set of hands clapping. Rufus, in ill-fitting riding clothes borrowed from various members of the household, was propped against the frame, regarding them both with an unreadable expression. “Do you want him on his knees metaphorically or literally?”

Belle gazed at him, unsure about how much he’d heard, and whether she owed him an apology. “I haven’t decided yet. But probably—”

“Both?” he finished for her.

“I’m . . . ,” she began.

But then his attention snapped to the visitor. “I thought I was never going to see you again, Asher.”

A subtle change was stealing across the clergyman, and Belle was hard-pressed to pinpoint it. It was not that he had softened, exactly, or shed any of the worldly lacquer that she personally found so off-putting. But however he looked at Rufus—whatever he showed to Rufus—was clearly not something he shared with anyone else. She thought it might be the realest thing about him. “You must have known I’d come.”

“Well, no,” said Rufus. “That’s why I just told you I thought I was never going to see you again. Do pay attention, darling.”

“I . . .”

“Bellflower?” Rufus turned back to her. “This is Mr. Asher Andrews, one of my closest ... what are we calling ourselves these days, Asher?”

“Friends,” he offered, in a rather strangled voice.

Rufus simply shrugged. “Friends it is. Asher darling, my dear old friend , this is my wife, Arabella Tarleton, now Lady Comewithers. Rather peculiar of you not to introduce yourself. What were you thinking?”

“Of you,” returned Asher, somewhat stricken and perhaps genuinely. “I was thinking of you. I didn’t—”

Whatever Asher didn’t, Rufus clearly had no time for. “My wife isn’t wrong, you know. Your capacity to think about me has varied greatly down the years.”

“I have always been there—”

“You have always been there at your convenience. When you’ve wanted something from me.”

There was a pause. If Asher and Rufus had not been between her and the door, Belle would have tried to make a discreet exit, a thought she was very proud to have entertained, because it was surely evidence of great maturity that she was willing to miss out on what could be a very dramatic meeting between her husband and his lover.

Asher, too, seemed conscious of her presence. “Could we possibly continue this conversation somewhere else?”

“Why?” asked Rufus coldly. “So you can taunt me with nostalgia, remind me of everything you have chosen instead of me, and make me fresh promises you have no intention of keeping?”

Belle winced, though she was not quite certain for whom she winced.

“You have no right”—the anger was hot and bright in Asher’s voice, and became him better than his placid superiority—“to throw my compromises in my face when you have made the exact same compromises.”

Sauntering across the room, Rufus rested his hands on Asher’s shoulders, looking up at him with an intensity of his own. “But you would never have chosen otherwise, would you, darling? First there was respectability and the acceptance of your peers. Then prosperity and stability, though you call that God. And let’s not forget your wife.”

Asher shivered slightly at the other man’s touch but did not push him away. “Are you sincerely expecting me to believe that you would have given up those things for me?”

“I told you I would. Several times. I begged—”

“And yet here you are, married too.”

“I can’t decide,” murmured Rufus, “whether I find it adorable or delusional that you think you have a right to be angry about that. But you are, aren’t you? That’s why you’re here. Because you feel cheated that I did something with my life that wasn’t about you.”

Asher swallowed, a fish caught on the hook of truth. “You said you never wanted this.”

“Oh, and you accept that, but none of my other professions?”

“I was concerned for you.” Asher was frowning again. If nothing else, Belle thought he probably believed what he was saying. “At first I gave the reports no credence. Then I feared what could have happened, what pressure may have been applied to you, to make you go against something you have always stringently maintained.”

This time, when Belle winced, it was for herself.

“Things change,” said Rufus, shrugging lightly. Perhaps because he did not feel he owed Asher more than that. Or perhaps because Belle was right there, and he didn’t think it was appropriate to say Actually, my wife-to-be abducted me .

“You don’t,” returned Asher, his eyes locked upon Rufus’s. “This doesn’t.” And then, half pleading, half demanding, “You love me.”

Rufus nodded wearily. “Yes.”

At this, Asher’s gaze slipped for a half second towards Belle.

“But,” Rufus went on equally wearily, “I don’t think that’s a good thing. For either of us.”

It took a moment for Asher to speak. Belle got the sense—had in fact had that sense ever since he had walked into the room—that he was not used to being checked or challenged or denied in any way. “Even for you,” he declared finally, “this is nonsense.”

“Is it nonsense? Well, it’s my nonsense.” Rufus’s mouth twisted into something that could almost have been a smile. “Go home to your wife, Asher. Write a sermon. Beget a child.”

At this, Asher jerked back as though Rufus had struck him. “You must know I’ve never laid a hand on her. I can’t. I—”

“Ah”—Rufus’s tone was mild, but his eyes were as desolate as ash—“the quickening of your blood brings you to me, as it has so many times before.”

“You act as though it is an insult to admire you.”

“No. Asher. You act as though it is an insult to admire me. Use your fucking hand.” Rufus spun on his heel. “Belle, my dear? Mr. Andrews is leaving. Let us see him out.”

She would not have stayed had it not been impossible to leave, and she would never have put herself between them without an explicit directive. That Rufus did not, in this moment, want to be alone with his former lover was not something she felt it was her place to speculate about. But it pleased her. Not the circumstances themselves, but the fact he was allowing her to protect him, as he had so often protected her.

The walk to the forecourt was silent and unpleasant, and Belle occupied herself for its duration by trying to imagine a set of circumstances in which it would be entirely natural for Asher Andrews to fall in the moat. Fortunately for everyone concerned, she was unable to do so.

Asher had another smoulderingly resentful glance for her as they approached his carriage, despite the fact she had paused at some distance from the pair.

“Is this to be it between us, then?” he asked Rufus, his voice pitched low, clearly hoping she would not overhear. “After all these years, and everything we have shared?”

Rufus stared at him, long and hard, like he was committing his face to memory. “Perhaps. For the foreseeable future, at least. I am tired of being your—” He broke off, laughing in that harsh mirthless way she had not heard for a while. “It’s not even your second choice, is it? Your fourth or fifth.”

“If you want soft words ... if you want me to beg—”

“I ...” Rufus hesitated, a bewildered, almost wondering quality touching his voice. “I ... don’t think I want anything from you, Asher.”

“You will regret this.” It sounded too sad to be much of a threat.

“My regrets hold soirées by moonlight. I can live with another.”

Lunging forward, Asher caught Rufus in a fervent embrace, and kissed him. Even from her place by the bridge, Belle saw how the seconds stilled for them, the way they came together like stars colliding, all light and impossible fire. It was Rufus, in the end, who stepped deftly away, the kiss just another memory between them.

“I don’t want ...,” said Asher, raw and breathless. “I don’t want to be without—”

Rufus was already halfway back to Belle. He barely turned. “Try not to dwell on it.”

He did not touch her as Asher departed, but he stood close enough that she could feel the shape of him, familiar from so many nights sharing a bed, and the heat of him. Even the rise and fall of his breath.

Eventually they were reduced to watching an empty carriageway.

“Are you ... are you well?” she asked tentatively.

He pulled her close with sudden urgency. “I don’t know, Bellflower.” Leaning over her, he pressed his face to her neck. “I didn’t think it would be so hard.”

“It’s annoying, isn’t it? When things are that way.”

A muffled laugh. “Terribly annoying.”

Gently, she ran her fingers through his hair. “I don’t think I can tell you that you did the right thing, because only you can know that. But I admired you very much.”

“You must think me quite the fool. He wasn’t always like this.”

“I believe it.” She sought for something she could say that was neither untruthful nor disdainful. “He has the makings of a compelling man.”

“Yes. But he has never been willing to suffer, for anything. I cannot blame him for that.”

“Nobody should have to suffer,” Belle said, still choosing her words carefully. “But fortifying yourself against it so assiduously can sometimes be its own kind of punishment.”

“I’m not trying to punish him. Not when I ... I feel as I do. Even if I didn’t.”

“I know,” she said quickly. “I know. But this is between him and his conscience.”

Rufus made a soft, pained sound, half-lost against her skin. “He’s the closest thing to mine I’ve ever had. The closest thing to a lover, as my aunt was the closest thing to family. Now they are both gone, and I have nothing of my own. Not truly.”

She wanted to tell him that he did. That he had her, and Swallowfield, for as long as he chose to call them his. But she would have been speaking for her own reassurance, hoping for him to look up, smile and agree. Which he would probably do, because he was kind, not necessarily because he believed her. He might never believe her. She, and her pile of Tudor chaos, might never be enough.

So she said nothing. Just held him quietly beneath the butter-bright sun. Let him feel everything he needed to feel. And wished she could give him something he could trust in.