‘Perhaps you’ll join me to talk for a moment, when you’ve finished your reading?’ said Mrs Alleyn, as they turned to climb the stairs.
‘It would be my pleasure,’ Rachel replied. And during that time I must somehow work out how to ask for my payment, or Mr Weekes will want to know why I have not.
‘I had hoped Jonathan would come down today, but…’ Mrs Alleyn trailed off, apologetically.
‘Men were ever stubborn, and wont to have things their own way.’ Rachel smiled, to imply no criticism, but Mrs Alleyn’s face went stiff.
‘How right you are, Mrs Weekes,’ she murmured.
Jonathan Alleyn didn’t rise as she entered the room – he hadn’t before, and this simple omission put her on edge. She had never known a gentleman not rise for a lady’s entrance; she didn’t know if his failure to do so made him less the gentleman, or her less the lady. Jonathan had opened one fold of the shutters, and the window just a fraction, so that the frigid morning air drifted in. He wore only dark blue breeches and a white linen shirt, the sleeves of it rolled up. The fire had died in the hearth and the room was heavy with cold, scented with wood and the damp grass of the crescent. Rachel squared her shoulders and went over to him. She could see gooseflesh on his bare arms, but his face had a faint sheen of sweat, where it was not covered by several days’ growth of whiskers. An empty wine bottle and a stained glass were on the floor beside him; the stale smell of his unwashed body hung about him.
‘Mr Alleyn…’ Rachel trailed off as he turned abruptly to look at her. He seemed to have trouble focusing his eyes. ‘Are you well? You look feverish… It’s so cold in here. Let me call for a servant to make up the fire-’
‘No, leave it. I am too hot… only this cold is keeping me alive, I think,’ he said, in a rough voice.
‘But, if you have a fever, we must call a doctor to-’
‘To bleed me? I have bled enough, Mrs Weekes. Please sit, and say no more on it. I am quite well.’ Shivering slightly, Rachel complied. Jonathan’s eyes followed her every move; they were the only lively thing in his gaunt face.
‘I brought a book from home this time. It’s the new poems by Keats… a wedding gift to me from my husband,’ she said. ‘And a selfless one, since I think he cares not one jot for poetry,’ she added, more softly. Perhaps my husband would prefer Byron.
‘Why would he, Mrs Weekes?’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘Why would Richard Weekes care for poetry? He is an unlettered oaf, and a covetous fool, for all his pretty face. Or, at least, he was when I last knew him.’ Jonathan took a deep breath and sat up straighter in his chair. He propped his elbows on the arms of it, steepled his long fingers in front of his mouth. His nails were bitten and ragged.
‘Well, I… I suppose a person might change, and improve,’ Rachel murmured. Only a few weeks ago she would have leapt to Richard’s defence. Now it seemed loyalty enough to say as little as possible about him.
‘They might. But such improvements tend to be skin deep only, in my experience. Tell me, how came you to be married to him?’
‘How do you imagine, sir?’ said Rachel, with some asperity. ‘We met at the house of my former employers. I was governess in Sir Arthur Trevelyan’s household, at Hartford Hall. Mr Weekes and I met when he came to discuss wine with Sir Arthur…’ She thought back to that moment, the moment she’d seen love storm through Richard like an invading army. It gave her a strange pang almost like nostalgia, or perhaps regret.
‘And it seemed a good match to you? You who are clearly educated, and have been raised a gentlewoman…’
‘Aye, sir, it seemed a good match. I would scarcely have consented to wed if it had not.’
‘I’m curious, that’s all. I would understand more of the ways women think, if I could. More of the reasons why they act the way they do.’ He gave her a tiny, wintery smile.
‘Not all women act in the same way,’ Rachel pointed out, carefully.
‘No indeed, though everything they do has the one thing in common – that it is unfathomable to me.’
‘What about the situation is hard for you to understand, Mr Alleyn?’ Rachel felt tension clipping her words.
‘Well, you cannot love him. I wonder what, then, made him seem a good match, when he is… what he is, and you have all the semblance of a lady. Was it simply his handsome face?’
‘I’m not a child, Mr Alleyn, to be so confused by good looks. A good many years have passed since you were… out in society. Perhaps a good many things have changed since then. And he loves me…’
‘Does he? Truly?’ Jonathan leant forwards in his chair with sudden intensity.
‘Yes!’ She thought of Richard’s anger, of the way he sometimes spoke to her; his unwanted touch, and the way her body had begun to recoil from it. She hoped none of it showed in her face.
‘And do you love him?’
The question hung in the air between them, and Rachel felt a flush begin to spread up from her neck. The choice was between truth and loyalty, between integrity and propriety, and it was not one she knew how to make.
‘You cannot ask me such things,’ she said at last, quietly. Again came his fleeting smile, as cold as the crystals of frost on the window glass.
‘Your reticence is answer enough. And here I am torn – for I could not have admired you for loving such a man, yet nor can I admire you for marrying beneath you, when you did not love him…’ Humiliation made Rachel angry.
‘Why should it matter whether you admire me or not, Mr Alleyn?’ she said stiffly. ‘When we first met you told me that all women are whores, be it for coin, status or safety that we sell ourselves.’
‘Did I say as much?’ Jonathan leant back, his eyes sliding away uncomfortably. ‘I can’t remember it.’
‘But you stand by it, perhaps? Well, ask yourself this, sir, if it is true: what choice does a woman have but to settle herself somehow, for one of those three things?’
‘And which one made you settle, Mrs Weekes?’
‘It is none of your concern. Your mother pays me to come here and read to you, and that is what I shall do.’
‘Whether I will it or not?’
‘Do you wish me to leave?’
‘Far be it from me to thwart another of my mother’s great plans.’ He leant back with a scathing wave of his hand.
‘You are too kind, sir,’ said Rachel, stung, in spite of herself. Jonathan watched her steadily for a moment, through narrowed eyes. Then he blinked, and his eyes softened.
‘Forgive me,’ he said curtly.
In the uncomfortable silence that followed, the sound of children’s laughter drifted up through the window from the street below. Clearing her throat, Rachel began to read. As often happened, she soon got lost in the words, in the beauty and intensity of the images they conjured, and time passed rapidly, without her noticing. She felt a deep sense of calm, of being outside of herself, and of the world. Her heartbeat was slow and steady until Jonathan interrupted her, as she was halfway through ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’.
‘Enough. Please. Read something else,’ he said hoarsely. Rachel returned to the cold gloomy room with a start, and to the thin, haunted figure sitting opposite her.
‘You do not like the poem?’
‘It speaks of things I have no wish to hear about. Enchantment, and betrayal…’
‘But I have not yet read to the end, you will see that-’
‘He is alone, is he not, and driven half mad by his love?’
‘Well… yes. In truth,’ Rachel admitted.
‘No more of it, then. ’Tis a lie, that misery longs for company. The suffering of others does nothing to ease my own.’
‘And what do you long for, sir?’ she asked. Jonathan stared at her for a moment, as if bewildered by the question.