Ember Island (11 page)

Then Jasper leaned close to Tilly and said in a harsh whisper, “Do not mention our financial troubles to anyone, least of all Ralph and Laura.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Tilly said.

He glanced around, a bitter frown pulling down the corners of
his mouth as he took in the brass door knocker, the stained fanlight. “My house looked like this once.”

“And it will again.” She squeezed his hand. “I trust you.”

Then a stout man with a thick mustache and slick black hair was there, pumping Jasper’s hand in a greeting and laughing merrily.

“Dellafore! You made it! After that bout with the Spaniard we thought you might stay in a little longer to lick your wounds.”

Jasper smiled. “Perhaps he will think twice before insulting my honor again. I always pay my debts on time, Ralph. I hope you didn’t listen to his nonsense.”

Ralph chuckled, gesturing them inside. “I rather think you walked away the worse of the two of you, but no matter. At least you walked away and he has returned to Spain, and you’ll know better than to do business with him again.” His attention turned to Tilly. “And this is the lovely Matilda?” he said, taking Tilly’s hand and kissing the air two inches above it.

“Tilly,” she said. “Nobody ever calls me anything else. Unless I’m in some kind of trouble.”

The man smiled a smile that reached all the way to his eyes and made them sparkle kindly. “And is that often?”

“Less often as I grow older, sir.”

He took their coats and handed them to a butler. “Welcome to my home, Tilly, and welcome to the island. Come and let me introduce you to my wife.” He turned, and Jasper took Tilly’s arm to follow him.

“He’s lovely,” she said softly to Jasper.

“If he drinks too much he gets silly. Do not take all he says as serious, my dear.”

Ralph led them into a parlor where a dozen or so people sat on sofas or in windowsills or stood leaning on the mantel or spilled out
onto the terrace beyond the French doors to smoke cigars. The good lighting showed up the fine velvet brocade on the sofas, the gold flocking in the wallpaper, the spotless brass lamps, giving the impression of a room that glowed like precious jewels; and Tilly fought a pang of envy. This was the life she thought she had been coming to, not the dim and empty Lumière sur la Mer. Light on the sea? It barely cast a light on their garden at night.

But then she admonished herself for being petty. She was alive, she was well, she was with the man she loved. They were at the start of their life together and things would improve. Besides, living a simple life was no less noble or worthy than living a life surrounded by fine things. She would get used to it if she had to.

She met a whirl of people, including the soft-voiced, pink-cheeked Laura and the Morningtons’ visiting eldest daughter, Maria. Maria had the nurse bring her baby daughter down, a little girl just starting to walk, and all the ladies cooed over her chubby-armed beauty while the men smiled indulgently. Tilly thought about a little girl of her own, and the thought infused her with warmth and light, so that she smiled at Jasper more fondly all evening—not that he noticed.

“Are you happy here?” Laura asked Tilly, when the child had returned to her room and they had a moment alone.

“I am still settling,” Tilly said honestly. “But I do believe I will be happy.”

An expression crossed Laura’s brow that Tilly couldn’t read. But it was followed by a quick smile. “You may always call on me,” she said. “Ralph and Jasper are good friends. I hope to see more of you.”

A meal was served, and Tilly found herself sitting between Ralph and another, much older man who was not interested in her at all and spent the entire meal with his shoulder turned away from
her, talking to his other neighbor. Ralph took it upon himself to make her feel welcome, chatting to her, asking questions about her grandfather, touching her shoulder lightly when her eyes grew teary describing his last days. He was a friend to her, a good friend, and she found herself warming to him very easily.

The food was a menu of traditional Guernsey fare—floured ormers with pork belly, whiting pie,
Gâche Mêlée
—created for the evening by Ralph and Laura’s cook whom they introduced at the behest of their delighted dinner guests. Tilly was surprised when the cook who emerged was a woman perhaps only of twenty-five, with thick strawberry blonde hair piled up loosely, and a sloe-eyed beauty about her that belied her hours working in a steaming kitchen.

“May I introduce Chantelle Lejeune,” Laura said, elbow-prompting Chantelle to curtsy. “Her English isn’t very good, but we have been so glad to have her in our employ this last year.” Laura smiled kindly.

Chantelle nodded, her eyes found each woman at the table one by one. When her gaze came to rest on Tilly, she assessed her with a proud flare of her nostrils, then looked away. What open arrogance. Between her and Mrs. Rivard, Tilly was starting to wonder why any good English folk would press the French into service if they couldn’t keep their manners. She pushed her plate away. The spicy apples in her dessert didn’t taste so good anymore. She looked around for Jasper, who was deep in conversation with a man near the end of the table. Laughter and talking started again, as plates were cleared away. Ralph had turned to talk to his other neighbor, so Tilly found herself in the middle of it but all alone. She folded her hands in her lap and tried to look as though she was enjoying her own company. People were moving about now, chairs scraping back, men speaking of retiring to the library with brandy.

Laura was at Tilly’s elbow. “Come, Tilly. The other ladies and I will take the southern parlor for tea.”

Tilly gratefully took her arm and the five ladies present took their places in the parlor. It had been a long time since she’d been in company and it was good to find herself chatting and laughing. How long since she had laughed? Really laughed? Certainly before Grandpa got sick. In fact, this was the first time since Grandpa’s death that the weight of all that had happened wasn’t sitting heavy across her shoulders. Perhaps that was the glass of wine she had drunk with dinner, but perhaps it was the company of other women.

Talk turned to the cook.

“I don’t know why you have her in the house, Laura,” sniffed one woman, a dowager in her fifties with an elaborate hairstyle of ringlets.

“When we met her, she was being treated abominably by a family across on Alderney. She has such a way with food and we felt as though we were rescuing her. She’s an orphan, she has always worked for a living and she’s very good at what she does. Ralph and I have tried to be family to her.”

The other opinions started to spill out. “She’s arrogant.”

“I think that’s just her face. It’s a haughty face.”

“There’s no haughty face without a haughty personality.”

“She’s very pretty,” Tilly offered.

One of the women smiled tightly. “Yes. But pretty isn’t everything.”

“She has a lovely spirit, really,” Laura said emphatically.

At that moment, Jasper appeared at the door. “Tilly, we are going home.”

“So soon?” Laura asked, rising and standing between them. “I hope all is well, Mr. Dellafore. Your wife is delightful company.”

Jasper nodded at Laura politely, but his gaze returned immediately to Tilly. He snapped his fingers. “Come along. My knee is causing me some pain and I need to rest it.”

Tilly climbed to her feet, setting aside her teacup and bidding her new companions good evening.

“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” she said to Jasper in the hall, as the servants helped them into their coats.

He didn’t respond, but she thought nothing of it. They began the walk home in silence. Jasper hurrying a little too fast for Tilly to keep up.

“Jasper,” she said, “may we go a little slower, please? These shoes aren’t meant for walking fast along country tracks.”

He didn’t answer, nor did he slow. In fact, he gave no indication he had even heard her. Now a cold puzzlement set in. Why was he behaving this way? Had she said something to upset him? But they had been in separate rooms; he would have no knowledge of what silly chatter she had indulged in. Nonetheless, she sifted through her conversations in her memory. What could he have misheard from the other room? Or perhaps she had somehow insulted Ralph, their host, over dinner. That was it. Ralph had had words with Jasper about her behavior. Now she retraced her dealings with Ralph, but could remember nothing. He had turned away from her towards the end of dinner . . . maybe he’d inferred an insult. Her brain whirled as she tried to work backwards, to identify her failing.

“Jasper,” she called, hurrying after him breathlessly, finally catching his arm at the start of the path up to the house. “Have I said something to upset Ralph? Because if I have, it was in no way intended. He is a lovely gentleman and—”

He whirled around to glare at her. “You couldn’t even make it to our door without mentioning him, I see.”

“I . . .” Tilly struggled with her bewilderment. “I merely mean that . . . You are angry with me and I couldn’t think of anything I’d done, so I assumed I’d said something . . .” But now Tilly wasn’t so sure.

“Oh, heaven forfend that you should have said something that made Ralph dislike you.” His tone was unctuous with scorn, and Tilly’s frustration began to bubble and steam.

“I can see I’ve upset you,” she said, her voice thick with distress, “so if you’ll please simply tell me what it is, then I will make amends.”

“You know what you did,” he huffed.

“No. No, I don’t.”

“Then you are a liar.”

“I’m not a . . .” She swallowed down her anger. Swallowed it down hard. His anger and offense were genuine. This must be somehow her fault and she mustn’t,
mustn’t
lose her temper now. “I promise you, Jasper . . .”

But he was already walking away. “The promise of a liar is worth little. Of a woman with faithless eyes, even less.”

Faithless eyes?

He stormed up the path and opened the door, and she slid in behind him before he slammed it firmly and stalked up the stairs.

“Jasper, please.”

“Don’t speak to me.”

She sat heavily on the bottom step, heard his door close firmly. Carefully, she went over every detail of the argument, examining them all one by one, then in groups and sequences, forcing her reason to override her passions. Jasper thought she had behaved inappropriately with Ralph, and somehow Jasper had cemented this opinion when in conversation with the men. For all her efforts, she could not remember a single thing she had done to
invite this opinion, but she accepted nonetheless that this was why Jasper was angry.

The only solution was to air it out with Jasper, but in the morning. When he had cooled off a little. She cheered herself with the thought. A silly tiff that would all blow over with love and openness.

•

But he wouldn’t speak to her in the morning. He wouldn’t meet her eye over breakfast and he behaved as if she wasn’t there, sitting across from him, begging with angry tears for him to answer her questions, believe her denials. And when she tried to grasp his arm and stop him leaving the house, he shook her off with enough force to frighten her but not hurt her.

By the fourth day of Jasper’s silence, Tilly was mad with an angry misery she had never known before. She came down for supper, expecting more of his stony-faced silence. Instead, she found the table set for one.

“Mrs. Rivard?” she asked, as the tray of oxtail soup, braised ham, and vegetables was put in front of her. “Has Mr. Dellafore gone out?”

“He says he will eat in his room for all meals from now on,” Mrs. Rivard answered with a subdued delight that twisted her mouth into a faint smile.

The cauldron inside her spat with heat and all at once boiled over. She sprang to her feet, flinging out her arm to send the soup bowl sailing across the room to smash against the wall and fall into sopping fragments on the floor.

“Temper,” said Mrs. Rivard, very quietly but unmistakably.

Tilly dashed away from the dining table and up the stairs, slamming open Jasper’s bedroom door before her fury dissipated
and made her timid again. “I will not have this, I will
not 
!” she shouted.

Jasper, at his writing desk, sat back and regarded her mutely.

“This must end. You are my husband and I am your wife. We cannot spend the rest of our lives this way. What will it take to make you talk to me?”

Jasper put down his pen, adjusted it so it was parallel with his paper, and then returned his attention to her and said, “Admit it.”

“Admit what?”

“Admit that you desired Ralph Mornington, that you couldn’t keep that desire off your face or out of your fluttering eyes, and that the moment you thought it might draw his pity, you told him of our financial problems.”

“I . . . I did none of that . . .”

“Then why did Ralph take me aside in the library and say, ‘How are things, really, old boy? Those debts all cleared?’ ”

“I don’t know. Because you had a fight with the Spaniard.”

“Not about money. About honor. You know nothing of the world of men.”

“Jasper, I said nothing to Ralph about our finances, and I certainly didn’t—”

He held up his hand in a stop gesture. “Then I have nothing else to say to you. Ever.”

The pressure of rage inside her made her ribs and muscles grind. She wondered if holding it in would actually cause her injury. Her mouth opened and closed but no words came out.

Finally she managed, “So if I admit to making eyes at Ralph, you will speak to me again?”

He didn’t answer.

“But will you not admonish me? Call me a flirt? A liar? A spiller of all your secrets? For I am not those things, Jasper Dellafore.”

Again, no answer.

Tilly slammed out of the room.

•

Sleep would not come. Regret, the gone-cold feeling that always followed her losing her temper, coiled sickly in her stomach. At midnight she was downstairs in the dining room, cleaning up the spilled soup and broken bowl by the light of a candle. At two in the morning she was crying softly into her pillow, her self-righteous rage now wilting into self-blame. There were always two sides to an argument, and perhaps she had been overly warm with Ralph Mornington for a first acquaintance. She hoped Laura didn’t think ill of her too. And had she perhaps said something that made Ralph think they weren’t doing well? A sad smile and a “we’ll get by” might have been all it took, and while she couldn’t remember saying such a thing, nor could she remember not saying it.