She had stood up too.
I said: “What was the news you had for me?”
“You’ll not like it, Maugan. Thomas has asked me to marry him.”
This window looked over the back of the house, and in the yard outside a servant was splitting logs with a beetle and a wedge. It was a monotonous but irregular sound and hollow, like a spade on a coffin.
“And you said?”
“I said I would give him my answer in January.”
“You said you told him nothing about us?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“It seemed better. There was no hurry.”
“Better? Better for whom? … Sue, this confounds me. I I …”
“I’m sorry.”
The room had become short of air. “Thomas … the man you have always avoided, disliked. This doesn’t make sense. He’s almost committed to Bridget Mobun.”
“He’ll betroth her next month if I refuse him.”
“If you refuse him? God in Heaven! Sue, look at me: what are you saying? What are you doing to me?”
But she kept her head averted. “I thought first I should not tell you. But then …”
“Sue, do you love me?”
“You know I do.”
“But this you must mean something else by love than I do … Do you mean you haven’t yet decided anything? That all this talk of …”
“No, I mean it all, but I’ll not go into marriage with you, Maugan, unless you can offer me some security, some hope of advancement. I’ve told you often before that my life at home has left me with some moral scar. The penury, the anxiety, the drudgery, the hand-to-mouth living, the illnesses … All these have made me resolve … My life with Philip, instead of making me bolder, has made me more afraid. Sometimes I think I’m not the right wife for you. You need someone with greater strength of purpose, who’ll not shrink from hardship or ”
“I need you. No one else.”
“You need me because you love me. It does not follow that my temperament is right for yours. Or my character “
“Sue, I can’t understand this. I’m sorry. I thought you hated Thomas l “
“I never hated him. He has become a more mature person of late. I don’t love him “
“But you’d marry him?”
“How many marriages are based on love? Do they all fail? I am under some pressure …”
“Pressure! What in God’s name do you mean by that?”
“Perhaps it’s the wrong word. Mark Reskymer has tried to persuade me to it because the Reskymers and the Arundells have been linked once before, and the property would stay within the family. And of course, though I don’t love Thomas, I’m bound by ties of affection to Elizabeth and Gertrude, and also to Lady Arundell. This for long has been my second home. I know it and love it.”
“And you would trade that for a marriage with someone …” I shook my head to try to clear it. “Does Lady Arundell know of this?”
“Not yet.”
“You said years ago that she’d never allow Thomas to marry you because you were penniless. I suppose that no longer follows.”
“Of course I’d be a less good match for him than Bridget Mohun. But we’re both older now. She could not stop Thomas if he wanted to marry me. I don’t think she would wish to.”
“So what is your price? What are your terms?”
I stared at her with a sheer hostility that it was impossible to hide. For the first time she flushed.
“Well,” she said, “now you see me as I am. Last time you were here you called me a schemer and I did not deny it. I scheme for everything for my comfort, my happiness and yours.”
“Mine ~ “
“Yes, for it’s better to break with me now than to leave this discovery until too late. I’m not a monster as you clearly think; but I am logical … and determined. In all things I weigh one thing against another and then decide. Even in marriage. Even in love. If that revolts you as it clearly does then it is better to leave me and go.”
My fist kept clenching and unclenching until it hurt.
“What is your price?”
“Do you mean on what conditions will I agree to marry you? But do you still want me to?” Tears were glinting in her eyes.
“At least permit me to know the terms.”
“You make it sound at its worst … I’ll marry you, Maugan, if you undertake to accept employment with Lord Henry Howard for at least one year and at the end of that time allow me to decide if it shall be for a second.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing else.”
“Are you not better advised to play safe with an Arundell?”
“Yes. But I’ll take that chance.”
“The eldest son of the house now. He’s not rich, I know, but his father was knighted. He may well be. And you have a better home than I could ever provide.”
“Who knows what you can yet provide?”
“Some day possibly you’ll be Lady Arundell. Better than a marriage to a base son of the Killigrews, who as a family are in any event bankrupt and destitute. You must be logical enough to realise you’d be ill-advised even to consider me.”
She blinked away the tears on her lashes. “But there is logic in considering you, Maugan. First, I want to marry you, not Thomas. There is logic in considering one’s own wishes … Second, I believe that if you have the opportunity you will travel farther than he will.”
In the silence I licked my lips. “Oh, Sue, I came to this meeting in such joy and hope. Now there’s a taste to it all that makes me want to retch.”
She turned away. “If that’s how you feel, I can say nothing more.”
“What more can you say?”
“Perhaps T can say, don’t decide now. Especially if it’s against me. Think it over. Go away, spend Christmas at Arwenack, come and tell me before I leave for London. It will not be until after Twelfth Night.”
The man outside had loaded a wheelbarrow with the split wood and was wheeling it towards the shed. A sleek grey boarhound came to lick at his heels and he impatiently kicked it away; but in so doing he upset his barrow so that half the wood rolled on the cobbles. Was there some wry metaphor in this for me?
Sue had picked up an old doll with a grey dusty face and was turning it over, smoothing out the crumpled musty skirt. I stared at her unbelieving. I felt like one of the men I had stabbed at Cadiz surprised, incredulous. Was this his warm blood?
Whatever I did or said now, my relationship with Sue would never be the same again.
She looked up through her lashes. “You have no further use for me?”
“No. Not that.”
“Will you think it over, Maugan? Think if it is so much that I ask.”
“Not that.” What we had disputed over seemed small and unimportant now. What she threatened. the fact that she was prepared to threaten, cast an immense shadow over all else.
“You will think it over?”
“I’ll think it over,” I said.
Before I left next morning I had agreed to her terms. But I had made one condition of my own. If I agreed, we were to be married by early February, no later.
I no longer trusted her to keep the bargain.
CHAPTER NINE
I told Dorothy Killigrew about Katherine Footmarker, and she shed a tear at the thought of not ever seeing her again. She had never looked on Footmarker as a witch but only as a friend gifted in healing. She had never feared her as stronger characters had feared her. She felt for her only the attraction I felt, untainted by the superstitious dread that in my case went with it.