Our eyes meet.
“Mr. Saintsbury,” I say.
“Aye,” she says. “They say in the village that he has been living here.”
I raise my chin, unsure if Betsy will admonish me.
“They tell the truth,” I say simply.
“Mr. Thompson is the source,” she says. “And I would not readily believe him, but I already know that Mr. Saintsbury is more to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t fret,” she says. “I would never tell a soul of it, and I wouldn’t say anything now if it weren’t all over the village. I understand all too well. He is a very amiable, very good-looking young man. And you yourself are so young and beautiful, and so kindhearted—” she smiles at that, “—once one gets to know you. It is hardly a mystery that you would come together.”
“I know it must bring you pain,” I say. “But they do not call me depraved, Betsy, for no reason.”
Betsy gives a little laugh. “Depraved! My dear. There is nothing depraved about it. What could be more natural?”
“I am sure they aren’t saying that in the village.”
She shakes her head. “They don’t understand it the way I do. I know you. And I know what I saw.”
“Saw?”
“Oh, my dear, it was quite by accident. When you two went off into the woods last week after Victoria’s little suckling and then the little wee thing came back, I went out to try and find you again and to call you back. And then I saw you in his arms.”
The memory sends a shiver through me. I remember Alfred lying in the ivy, completely undone.
“That was reckless. But we have been reckless. I havebeen reckless. It is my fault that Mr. Thompson discovered us.”
“Oh, forget that man! I do not see why it is reckless or careless. Or why it should be a grand secret. If you really care for the man, that is. It is hardly remarkable you two should fall in love.”
I shake my head.
“I have ruined him for good society,” I say, needing to impress upon Betsy the disgrace of the situation. “He will keep his post, because I will insist upon it, and no one will go against me. But heisruined.”
Betsy needs to understand. She is from a different sphere of life. In her world, the world of the peasantry, a young man and a young woman might fall into love or lust, and they might be together, and no one would look askance as long as they married eventually. To the working people, the sequence of events, of intimacies, matters far less. Premarital coupling is not the scandal it is amongst the upper and middle classes.
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “But if you marry?—"
“I cannot marry him, Betsy.”
“I knew you would say that,” the old woman says, her voice gone as soft and smooth as old silk. “And perhaps I do not know about all the complications that marriage would involve. You are a rich girl. Richer now after the death of your father. And I know that riches make things between men and women more difficult. But, my girl, I want you to be happy—and in the forest, if I may say, you looked it. You deserve to be happy after all the pain you have had. You’re a good-hearted girl, no matter what those who don’t know better say. I would know it.”
She is wrong. Betsy is blind where I am concerned. But still a lump rises inmy throat.
“Thank you.”
Iamgrateful. My friends in London, of course, praise me and believe the best of me. But they do not know all my secrets, all my past, and Betsy has an idea of much of it.
“But you assume that Mr. Saintsbury would want such a thing.”
I do not want to marry—and I am sure that Alfred would not want to be yoked to me for life. Once our affair is over and we tire of each other, he could marry. His prospects would not be what they were before, but he could still have a life, a family, something like what he was meant to have before I ruined him.
“Ah, lass,” she says. “Even before the forest, I could see Mr. Saintsbury thinks you’re a veritable angel. The way he looks at you—there’s not two meanings to it. He would lie down and die for you. That is plain as day. I am sure of it. It all rests in your hands.”
I shake my head. Alfred claims to love me—but marriage is another thing.
