The pang that went through Lydia was an old one, but still sharp. “They are very proud to have a soldier in the family,” she managed, though her throat was thick.
Mrs. Marwood was watching her closely. “A soldier, not a son?”
Lydia flushed. “My father always hoped Peter would take up his practice after him. My mother wanted grandchildren. Peter wanted neither of those futures. It made things… tense, at times.” Mrs. Marwood’s quiet, gentle gaze invited confidences, so Lydia found herself adding: “I think they found it much easier to be proud of him at a distance.”
“You mean they liked the idea of a son more than the son himself,” Harriet said, with a frown.
Lydia’s flushed deepened, a painful red burn on her cheeks. “I wouldn’t say so.”
“Marwood’s family were much the same,” the widow went on. “He thought if he got married it would make them happy.”
“Did it not?” Lydia asked, taking a sip of her tea.
Mrs. Marwood shook her head. “Maybe if he’d married the girl they thought he should.” Her mouth quirked. “Maybe if he’d stopped falling in love with men.”
Lydia choked. Tea went in all the wrong places in her throat, and it was a long time before she could cough her way clear again and wipe the moisture from her eyes.
Mrs. Marwood was laughing silently, her whole self transformed by it. “Oh, I do enjoy shocking people. And I have so few opportunities for it these days. Thank you for that, Miss Wraxhall.” Then, as quick as it had come, her mirth vanished. She rose and nodded and drifted out again, sadness wreathing her like a queenly mantle.
Harriet watched her anxiously. “That was the longest conversation we’ve had from her in months. Of all of us, she left the most behind her in Crimea. You ought to have seen her as she was—she and your brother were very much of a type.”
“I see.” Lydia fingered the handle of her teacup, fussing with the porcelain and using it as a distraction. Mrs. Marwood’s little bombshell had opened certain possibilities in the conversation. Confession would be a relief—but it was a risk, too. “Peter and I…” Lydia started, and stopped, took a breath, and all but flung the words out. “Peter and I used to joke that someone had switched our hearts. Because he had eyes only for men, and I was forever drawn to women.”
“Ah,” Harriet breathed. Barely a sound, almost a sigh.
“That’s why he joined the army. It was a penance for an ineradicable flaw. He wanted to do all he could to make up for it, you see.”
“And the army doesn’t let an officer marry without permission,” Harriet added.
Lydia nodded. “So all he had to do was never ask permission. And our parents’ arguments lost purchase. Especially when he talked of the nobility of soldiering, though I’m not certain he truly believed all he said.”
Harriet snorted. “Nobility of war wears off quicker than the polish on a new soldier’s boot.” She bit her lip, eyes far away—then suddenly she leaned forward, the shift in intensity pinning Lydia in place like a rapier, sliding through her with almost no pain at all. “I have known war. I have seen the grief it brings, seen people use that grief like a knife to wound themselves and others. Your brother took that weapon and made it into a shield. He protected a widow and her child until his last breath left his lungs, for the love of a man he’d already lost. He stole food for them, he found them clothing and shelter when everything was rags and mud. He used his last strength to write a letter for us to take to Lady Eccleston, to get us away from the war at last. Because a man he loved would have wanted him to.” Harriet’s voice caught; she choked the emotion back and went ruthlessly on. “You cannot tell me a love like that is anything short of holy, or anything less than a miracle, when it felt like a blessing just to have seen it. The kind of vision that would give a sinner the unshakeable faith of a saint. A love like a bonfire—or a sun. I don’t care what the laws say, or what the church claims God decrees. I have learned there is something better than all that, and I hope—” She let out a laugh like a sob. “I hope someday to have a chance to throw my own cold heart headlong into the flames.”
The anguish in her voice nearly broke Lydia. It felt old, hardened, scarred over. Lydia knew what it felt like to yearn for love, to pine for desire, lonely but more than lonely because you knew what you were missing. Ashes that remembered what it felt like to burn.
Lydia had spent the last ten years seeing the same small people in this small town over and over. Her heart had already tested itself on everyone local. Love had flared, then faded into comfortable friendships. She’d believed she’d only find love again if she left Bickerton, but she had been too cowardly to leave. It was daunting, to uproot an entire life—especially for a love you could never name outside of stolen whispers. Especially when her parents had already lost one child: her clear duty was to comfort them in her brother’s place.
And now Harriet Boyne had come, a widow whose spine was ice and her mouth blood-red, those lips forming words that spoke to the deepest longing of Lydia’s own heart.
I would love you, if you let me. The words filled her mouth like honey.
“You must have loved your husband,” she said instead.
“I did,” Harriet confirmed. “And he loved me. But he wanted to love me at a distance. The way your parents love your brother. He wanted to love a wife, but not a person.” She slumped back in her chair, shoulders curving with an old burden of hurt. “I read the early reports of the war and couldn’t stand being so many miles and months away. I followed him out—and found he’d rather I’d have stayed at home.”
“Perhaps he wanted to protect you.”
Lydia’s hand tightened on the arm of the chair, knuckles white beneath taut skin. “He told me I’d only made a burden of myself. The army makes no provision for its soldiers’ wives on campaign. They are given no rations, no equipment, not even funds with which to buy food. The French do things differently—they have many of their women acting as sutlers, in uniform. Very brave and bright beside our ragged English wives. Well, I had known I’d have to make my own way, but I thought at least John would welcome me. Instead, we fought. Bitterly. I offered him a sacrifice he had no use for. ‘Well good riddance to him, and good riddance to love!’ I thought. I would have shipped home the next day—but there was no homebound ship to take me, and no living for me there but what I could scrape. And then Alma came, and John was gone.” Her voice was hard as stone now, cold as ice. “I was then offered a widow’s pension. You see, John had done it properly and obtained his commanding officer’s approval.” She fidgeted and sat up, her spine and shoulders stiff and haughty. “The army will grant us a living or a living husband, but never both at once.”
Lydia’s hands ached to reach out in comfort. “I’m astonished you can still talk of love after that.”
Harriet shrugged. “I’d bought myself a diamond and found it to be paste,” she replied. “But I know true gems exist. I only wish…” She stopped.
Lydia stared. Harriet Boyne looking anxious was a rare thing. She didn’t like it. “What do you wish?”
Harriet sucked in a breath. Her eyes had gone chilly again, bleak as the winter world outside. “I wish I didn’t have to explain so much. About John, about the war. About myself, really. I wish I could just—feel something other than broken.” She shook her head. “Indoors I chafe at confinement, and outdoors I feel small and lonely. I can put it out of my mind for a little while,” as she stroked a grateful hand over the cover of her latest novel, “but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life trying to escape from myself. I just—don’t know what else to do.”
The plaintive confession, plainly spoken, all but broke Lydia’s heart. She had never been to war, had never lost a husband—but she knew that lonely restlessness far too well. And she realized: she’d offered to help Harriet become part of the life of Bickerton—but maybe also she’d hoped to escape. Her own life had started to feel far too small, bounded by rules that cut tighter and tighter as the years marched on. Thornycroft was just far enough away from the rest of Bickerton that it felt like a separate place. Another world.
