Amy Snow (45 page)

“If
what
? If I were
worthy
of you? Amy, she has a twisted idea of love, and I think you know that. You know the man I am. I am no autocratic husband to insist on dumb obedience. But to ask someone who
loves
you to accept your inexplicable absence for an unspecified time, to accept without fear your taking a long solitary journey to an unknown destination, to proceed without reassurance, to accept being shut out of your life, your business, your heart, as if he were
nothing
 . . . I know I said I would support you in your quest, but this—it's too much to ask, Amy. If you think it reasonable, you cannot feel the love that I do, indeed you cannot.”

“I
do
feel as you do. But my circumstances are different. I am not free! You know I am not free!” My voice is so small compared with his.

“I say it again. I do not ask you to give up Aurelia. As strange and secret and dark as all this appears to me, I ask only that you do not cast me aside until it is more
convenient
—that we face it together. That is what a commitment to love entails, Amy! Can you not offer me that?”

I stare at him miserably. My head is spinning. I can barely understand what he's saying to me. He's waiting for an answer. He's glaring at me. I have had enough of being told what I must and must not do. My trunk is packed and sits on the carriage. Ambrose is waiting. And I want to get to York in order to finish this, at long last.

I stand. “Not
now
, Henry, you know that. But you must not say that I do not feel as you do. That is cruel. You know I love you vastly.”

I expect him to try to detain me again, but his fury has blown out. He stands apart from me. He looks sad, weary, and suddenly ten years older. “But love is not comprised of words, pretty though they are to hear. It is comprised of the choices you make in every moment. Yours do not seem to include me. You speak of the future, but any future is born of the present: this moment in which we are standing.”

I have grown numb. I cannot feel my own face. “Henry, I should like very much to debate the nature of love with you, but I don't have time for it now—I should not even be here; I was forbidden even the time for good-byes. But I would not leave you without a good-bye, Henry.”

“Oh! Am I to be grateful for that? That you did not leave the city without so much as a word or a farewell wish, leaving me ignorant of what had become of you? Well, thank you, but that seems to me to be the very merest of courtesies! And in future? Am I to wave you off willingly every time someone tells you where you must go, what you must do? Why must you be so
obedient
, Amy? You are no Hatville servant now.”

I lift my chin. “I am well aware of it! But this is all I can offer this morning. Truly, Henry, I do not wish to hurt you but I have no choice . . .” I trail off, recognizing that this is what I have been telling myself since January—but I know I no longer believe it. I wait for Henry to point out the fact, but he is preoccupied.

“Perhaps it is too soon for you,” he says, “embroiled as you still are in intrigue and preoccupied with the past. Perhaps you simply do not feel as I do. I have no way of knowing, but I know this doesn't feel right. This is not how it should be.”

He looks heartbroken. His eyes are all darkness and his shoulders are low. I do not understand what is happening. I take a step towards him, but he turns away from me and rests his hands on the mantel.

“Dearest Amy . . . I think . . . I release you from our understanding. I can see you are under a great weight and I do not wish to add to it. I will not place demands upon you when there are already so many. But nor can I live as you expect me to—made marginal, held at a distance. I am not . . . Good God, I am not
indifferent
to you!” He bangs a fist suddenly on the mantel, making the candlesticks jump. “I wish to care for you. I wish us to have a true and loving partnership. If I cannot have that, I cannot simply be . . . a fool who waits in the wings.”

If I was numb before, now my whole body is ice. “What are you saying? I don't understand! You are breaking off with me?”

“Don't misunderstand me, Amy. It is not what I wanted”—he shakes his head sadly—“but I am trying to do what is best for both of us.”

My voice seems to dredge up words from a very great depth. When I speak, I sound strangled and faint. “But that is nonsense, Henry,
nonsense
! All I ask is
time
 . . . and your cooperation . . . to see to certain things . . . to make myself ready . . .
before
you and I . . .”

“Then you have made your choice. Good-bye, Amy, and Godspeed for your quest. I wish you safe and I hope that you will come and find me when you are free to love me as I love you. But I shall not depend upon it, for who knows what other demands might be placed upon you then, demands that you will judge more pressing than our union. I hope I may see you again. But until then I shall continue my life as I see fit.”

He does not move towards me to kiss me, or take my hand. He stands rigid and retracted, as though the slightest touch would burn him. I stare at the floor; all the solidity has drained from me into the carpet. The ice is melting and in its place is
pain
. Our understanding at an end?
A fool who waits in the wings?

Why can't he understand? I only ever had one person to love before in all my life and that was Aurelia. I do not know how to have more than that. It is not just the treasure hunt, I think bitterly. It is love—
commitment
. I am ill suited to it. I am unpracticed at it. I will need time to make sense of it, to begin to believe that I deserve it, to see my life through its magnifying lens. And I do not have that time. There is no time.

I spin on my toes and bolt from the room. I leave the house, the door banging behind me. I am running again, along a street that is just waking, stirring to a brand-new day.

Heedless in my unhappiness, I do not go straight back to the carriage. Tears run down my face until I am half blind with them. I turn right when I should turn left and find myself on Pultney Bridge.

The water calls to me. I hurry down a flight of twisting stone steps without thought. But as soon as the narrow passage of stone has me, I hesitate. It smells cool and damp; the early-morning sunlight has not penetrated down here. The steps are slippery and green, as though the riverweed is crawling from the water and advancing on the city. Still I proceed—I have a fancy that to be close to the river will soothe me.

It does not. It will take more than a river to wash away the wound in my heart. Henry has ended our engagement. Well, it was not quite an engagement, of course, but the promises we made to each other—he has withdrawn them! I can't bear it. I can't bear it. Without Henry to come back for, I don't care where I go or how long I may be there. Perhaps then I shall stay in York, far from it all, far from disappointed hopes and shattered dreams. The farther the better.

I grip the rail and stare into the rushing, enigmatic jade. I want to crumple to the ground. I want to go back and beg him to forgive me, but I can't. He is asking something of me that I cannot give and, in truth, that I do not fully understand. This will not have altered in the last six minutes. He sounded so very decided. He looked so very determined.

“I shall live my life as I see fit”—there was the stubbornness of which he has spoken. And the look in his eyes, the hurt I have caused—that stays me above all, for I do not deserve him, I know that.

“Strange and secret and dark.” Once again I feel like a goblin, lurking in the watery shadows. I tell myself it is better for Henry if I don't go back. And I despise myself more than ever because I know it's not true.

Beyond the river's bend I hear the voices of men singing drunkenly, laughing in bursts. I feel a flood of fear. Foolish Amy. Alone before six o'clock on a deserted morning in the secret places at the foot of a bridge. No lady would behave thus. And no one knows where I am.

I start back up the stair, but I slip and bump down three, four steps, grazing my hand and striking my chin. I have just regained my feet when the men burst round the bend and the best I can do for cover is to stand close to the staircase wall, holding my skirts to me. If they climb the stairs onto Pultney Bridge, I will be discovered. If they stagger on along the river, I may not be.

There are three of them: gentlemen. That is to say, they look rich and are wearing evening dress. I am unsurprised. If a waterman was to be found drunk, it would not be early in the morning with a day's work ahead. These men are returning from a night of revelry.

I shrink against the wall, its touch clammy through my dress. My heart hammers as I watch them stagger and sway. I recognize one of them, a Mr. Leaford or Lefton or some such; Mr. Garland has introduced us.

I want to steal away, but I fear the movement will attract more notice than staying still. When the last chorus of “Sweet Molly's Favors” has died away, I suddenly hear a familiar name.

“Old Garland sustained some heavy losses last night!” slurs one of the men playfully. “Veeeery heavy! He's playing out of his league now, gentlemen. Out of his league. Out of his . . .
league
,” he reiterates, lest his point remain unclear.

His companions guffaw heartily.

“He's not in ladies' drawing rooms now!” observes Mr. Leworth—that was it. “I rather like seeing him taken down a peg or two. Prouder of himself than any fellow I ever met. A veritable peacock!”

I feel indignation on my friend's behalf. Certainly he cuts a finer figure than any of these three—why should he not be proud of that?

“Down a peg!” adds a short, dark-haired man, jumping up and down, pretending to strike a peg into the ground. “Down a peg, down a peg! Pound him into the ground!”

“Yes, all right, Whentforth! Steady on or you'll be in the river, and I'm not fishing you out. Leave you for the fishes after you stole Maria Gasby from me last night. For the fishes. The
fishes
! Poxy, sly fellow, you are. Don't know what the ladies see in you at all.”

Whentforth guffaws. “Don't you, indeed? I'll show you then,” and he starts to unfasten his trousers. I avert my eyes in horror, then look back, curious, but all I see is a flap of trouser front and a billow of white shirt.

“This is what they like,” Whentforth goes on. “All the same, women are. Don't matter if they're baronet's wives or waterside whores.” I narrow my eyes. “I can have any woman I want, you mark me!”

“Any but three, mind you,” cautions Leworth. “Rhoda Carmichael, Bellatrix Davenport, Amy Snow: all out of bounds.”

Despite myself, I lean forward and frown.
Amy Snow?
Isn't that . . . well, isn't that
me
?

The trio have ground to a halt and stand swaying with their backs to me, looking over the river. Their mood has gone from buoyant to reflective, but still they talk at the tops of their voices, apparently deeply impressed with their own sonorous pronouncements.

“That's true,” bellows the third. “Garland's placed his bets. Mind you, once he's made his choice, the other two will be fair game again. They'll be fair game. Fair
game
, dontcha know! Wouldn't mind having a crack at that Davenport one, whassit now? Belinda?
She's
a beauty and I doubt she's half so haughty when she's flat on her back with her skirts round her ears.”

I swallow and shrink back again. I want to vanish more than ever but . . . what do they mean,
Garland's placed his bets
?

“Don't know what he sees in that Snow girl,” he continues. “Snow, you know. The
Snow
girl, you know, the one who's gone from rags to riches and we all know how! The one with the secret business she can't possibly tell him about. My eye! As if he's
remotely
interested! Where on earth did he dig her up from anyway? Funny-looking thing as I ever saw.
I
wouldn't marry her, not for any fortune.”

“Well, you say that, Brazil, but you don't have half a family estate in hock. Besides, I prefer her to the others myself. She looks a feisty little thing and there's something about those eyes, wouldn't you say, Whentforth?”

Whentforth has given up on the journey altogether and is lying on the ground, spread-eagled.

“Pound her into the ground too,” he agrees sleepily. “Pound all of 'em.”

“Dammee, we'd better get him home,” says Brazil, contemplating him in dismay. “Which way's quicker, Leworth? River or steps?”

“River, to Whentforth's place.” Leworth gestures extravagantly at the river and staggers. “Disgrace a fellow can't hold his drink better than that. Speaking of which, d'you think Garland got back all right? Never seen him so laced as he was last night.”