‘Starling,’ said Jonathan, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. He sighed. ‘You remind me of her sometimes. Did you know that? Just in your… gestures. Your facial expressions. Just sometimes.’ Starling blinked, and lost sight of the knife behind a haze of tears. She shook her head vehemently.
‘I wish you had died instead of her!’ she said. Jonathan didn’t flinch.
‘So do I,’ he said.
The proper thing to do would be to stay indoors until the cut and swelling on her lip had fully healed, but Rachel found she cared less and less for what was proper. One side of her chin was greenish grey with bruising, and the cut had knit into a stiff black line. As he dressed, Richard kept his eyes turned away from her, and wore his guilty scowl.
‘You will not go to the Alleyns looking like that,’ he said, pulling on his boots.
‘I have an appointment. I will keep it.’
‘But, your face…’
‘What of it?’
‘You should send a message and say you’re unwell,’ he suggested, as sulky as a child. Rachel felt a whole new emotion just then, one she had never known before – an exhausting blend of fear and contempt.
‘But I am quite well, Mr Weekes. And I’m sure my appearance will cause no particular outrage in that house,’ she said stiffly. Richard didn’t see fit to argue further; he went down to the shop without another word and Rachel was left to wonder if that was how things would be between them, for the rest of their lives. Anger, violence, disappointment. For both of us, it seems.
By the time Rachel had climbed to Lansdown Crescent the sun had turned the milky sky a blinding white, and behind that a touch of blue was beginning to glow. Frost furred all of Bath’s window glass; the air was entirely still. November was promising to be cold and sharp. Jonathan rose from behind his desk when Dorcas showed Rachel into his rooms; he smiled, but it melted from his face when he saw her.
‘What happened here?’ he said seriously.
‘A small mishap, nothing more.’
‘He beats you?’
‘This was the first time, and my fault, in part. I quarrelled with him.’
‘The first time is rarely the last. What was the quarrel about?’
‘I-’ Rachel broke off, unsure if it would sound petty and sentimental to him. ‘It was a trifling thing, to be sure. I had a silver box that belonged to my mother. And inside it I kept a lock of her hair, pinned to the lining. The box is… sold.’ It still made her sad, and somehow more alone.
‘Sold by your husband, without your knowledge?’
‘Yes. A childish thing to mourn, I know. But mourn it I do.’
‘Perhaps, but to have a piece of the child you were can be a precious thing,’ said Jonathan, softly. ‘I can scarce remember what it was to be a child. Who I was then, before all of this…’
‘Perhaps it does no good to. The temptation is always there to imagine what that child would make of me now. Of the life I have chosen for myself.’
‘Nobody can know the outcome of things, before they are begun. You should not blame yourself,’ Jonathan said quietly. Rachel turned to gaze out of the window, where the sky was now brilliantly blue. The rooms around her seemed stifling in comparison.
‘Come. Let’s go out for a walk. I can’t bear to stay cooped up inside today.’
‘I don’t go out.’ Jonathan shook his head with a frown.
‘I know, and it’s high time you did. Come. The fresh air and exertion will do us both good.’
‘I don’t care to be seen. My leg, and all the tattlers… And I can’t abide crowds,’ he said. Rachel thought for a moment.
‘How about sheep? Can you abide sheep? I daresay they will have nothing much to say about you, or your leg. Come. I insist.’
Dorcas and the butler, Falmouth, watched in undisguised amazement as Jonathan came downstairs and asked for his coat and hat. They watched in more amazement as he left the house, squinting in the sunshine, with Rachel on his arm.
‘They will run and tell my mother I am cured,’ he said drily. He kept his arm, and Rachel’s hand on it, clamped tightly to his ribs, and Rachel felt the tension running through him.
‘It is only a walk,’ she said carefully. ‘Quite a commonplace thing.’ Jonathan kept his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him, ignoring the glances they got from passers-by – gentlefolk and dallying servants both.
‘People are staring,’ he muttered. ‘Damn their eyes!’ His weak leg twisted and buckled slightly as he walked, giving him a jolting, uneven stride.
‘Let them stare. They’re most likely looking at my lip and wondering if I kicked you in the leg to retaliate,’ said Rachel. Jonathan laughed. It was the first time she had ever heard it, and straight away she loved the sound, and the way it bounced along. In the sunlight his skin was terribly pale, but the shadows under his eyes and cheeks looked less severe. She could see the grey running through his dark hair more clearly, yet at the same time he seemed younger, as uncertain as a youth.
They reached the far end of the crescent and passed through a gate onto the high common. The grass was ankle-length and tussocky, drenched in dew and frost-melt, glittering in the sunshine. They walked for twenty minutes or more, climbing steadily, until the city was behind and below them, and the only sounds were the occasional bleats of sheep and piping of birds. The uneven ground was hard work for Jonathan, and he had been so long without exercise that he was panting by the time they stopped and turned to look back. The dew had soaked their feet and the hems of their clothes. Rachel’s toes were damp and numb, but she didn’t mind it at all. The blood was thumping through her veins; she felt warm, and well. They stood side by side to catch their breath, and squinted down at the tangled streets of the city, where the last shreds of mist lingered like ghosts.
‘This is as far as I have been from my rooms in nine years or more, I think,’ said Jonathan.
‘No wonder you’ve been so unhappy,’ said Rachel. Jonathan looked down at her, but said nothing. ‘I prefer to look the other way – away from the city. To look at the far horizon. Somehow it always makes problems seem smaller,’ said Rachel. Jonathan turned obediently to the west, where the River Avon shone like a discarded silver ribbon, winding through fields and trees still clad in the remnants of their autumn colours.
‘I came to Bath with my mother because I didn’t know where else to go, or what else to do. I didn’t care, because I wanted to die,’ Jonathan murmured. ‘Now it seems I will never leave.’
‘Of course you could leave, if you wanted to.’
‘And go where, and do what?’
‘Wherever you choose; whatever you choose. Take a wife, begin a family. You have that freedom; you have that choice. Don’t you see? You can do that. You need not stay trapped here, as I must.’ If I persuade him well enough he will do it, and I will see him no more. The thought jolted her heart. Better that, though, than him continuing in torment.
‘The rules are harsher for women than men.’ Jonathan narrowed his eyes against the light, and they were unreadable. ‘But you could still leave him, if you were strong enough to do so.’
‘And go where? And do what?’ She smiled, sadly. ‘I would be a pauper, reduced to beggary, or whoredom. I would have no employment, no society. No. I have no choice but to remain by my husband’s side.’ Whatever lightness of mood she had felt suddenly vanished, and she took a deep breath.
‘Then I will remain as well,’ he said. ‘Who else would sit and read tales of adventure and derring-do to me, a mad cripple?’ He smiled, and Rachel smiled back at him.
‘You are not mad, or crippled,’ she said.
‘Then what am I?’ he asked.
Wounded. Haunted. A killer. The person I most yearn to see.