Ember Island (7 page)

She was surprised, on her return home, to hear voices from the parlor. Even more surprised to recognize one of them as Grandpa’s. She quickly hung her bonnet on the stand by the door and hurried to the parlor.

Grandpa sat heavily, legs spread wide, slumped to one side. He had dressed himself but misbuttoned his vest. His cheeks were sunken, so she could see the shape of his skull beneath skin that had taken a yellow-gray hue. It was almost uncanny to see him upright. Almost upright.

“Grandpa!” Tilly exclaimed, moving towards him.

But he held up a frail hand. “No, no, Tilly. I will be fine. This is Mr. Leadbetter, my solicitor.”

Tilly turned to see the other man in the room, a rosy-cheeked fellow with a welcoming smile. “How do you do, Mrs. Dellafore?” he said.

She took his hand momentarily, then released it and began to unbutton her gloves. “Forgive me for barging in. I had not thought to see my grandfather up and about.”

“I will return to my room soon enough, dear,” Grandpa said. “But first I must finish my business with Mr. Leadbetter.” He gasped, and took a moment to catch his breath.

“Can I get you water, Grandpa?” Tilly asked.

Again he waved her away. “Business, my dear Matilda. Let the men finish their business.”

She squeezed her gloves in her fists. “Of course,” she said. “You only need to call if you need me.” She gave Mr. Leadbetter a meaningful look, which he returned with a slow nod.

“I will take good care of him,” he said.

Tilly backed out of the room and went upstairs to her own bedroom, to hang up her light coat and fold her gloves away in her drawer. She presumed Grandpa’s conversation with Mr. Leadbetter was part of his getting his papers in order before he died. She sat heavily on the bed and lay back, fingers tracing lightly over the embroidered bedspread. She closed her eyes. What a special hell she was in. The man who had been the center of her world was dying. Without him, would she not be adrift in the world? The hard, aching sadness gripped her and she felt a tear roll over her cheek and into her hair. She longed to be able to lean on Jasper, for him to catch her tear in the crook of his finger, but now Jasper was a man made of mists and shadows. She couldn’t grasp him.

At length she heard Leadbetter’s carriage leave and went downstairs to help Grandpa back to bed. She found him, however, shuffling about slowly, making a pile of objects on the tea table. A clock, two gilt picture frames, four silver candlesticks, a crystal vase.

“What are you doing?” she asked, hurrying to him and putting her hand under his arm to steady him.

He shrugged her off. “I’ve spoken to Leadbetter and there’s nothing for it. The wording of my own father’s will was clear, and Godfrey and Pamela will take all. Everything. So we need to get some of these things out of here before I die.”

Tilly wondered briefly if Godfrey was right and Grandpa’s mind was addled. But he had been thinking and conversing lucidly until now. “Where are you going to send them?” she asked.

“To your new home. To Lumière sur la Mer. We’ll pack them in a trunk and ship them over.”

“We can’t do that. Pamela has counted everything with her eyes.”

He huffed his way through the next sentence. “We
can
do it . . . and we will . . . I am making you a number of gifts . . . for your marriage. These things are mine until I die.”

“You need to be in bed, Grandpa.”

He caught his breath. “I understand you will not want to be complicit. Go now. Leave the house and take a walk about the village. I’ll get Granger to help. No, wait. I forgot something.”

He dragged his feet to the mantel where his cigar box lay, untouched for many months now since he first started feeling ill and breathless.

“I don’t want cigars, Grandpa,” Tilly said. “I don’t want anything. I don’t want trouble. Godfrey will give me trouble.”

“Hush now and listen.” He thrust the cigar box into her hands. “What’s in here shouldn’t be shipped . . . you must take it with you. Carefully.”

She unlatched the box, but he stilled her hand.

“Look later. You will hand it directly back to me if you open it now. I had Leadbetter organize it for you.”

Tilly moved the latch back into place with her thumb. She knew she should refuse it, all of it. But she thought of Pamela getting her hands on the silver candlesticks—Tilly had been with Grandpa the day he bought them for her fourteenth birthday dinner—and she hardened her resolve.

“I know nothing,” she said.

“Look out for the chest. I don’t know if it will get there before . . .” He trailed off, then sat down heavily. “The pain will be over soon.” Another fit of breathlessness gripped him and she moved towards him.

“No. Go,” he said. “Tell Granger . . . to come . . . The sooner it is done, the sooner . . . I can rest.”

Tilly touched his beloved forehead, then turned and left, gathering her bonnet at the door. She tucked the cigar box under her arm to free her hands to tie the ribbons, then headed down through the back garden. She opened the kissing gate that led to the path running beside the stream. Blackbirds and robins sang, and stringy wildflowers lined the way. She kept away from the main village, taking the stream path past the mill and down onto the grasslands that separated the village from the wood.

Here, under a chestnut tree, she sat and opened the cigar box. Banknotes. Lots of banknotes. Tilly gasped, pulling a handful out. Underneath lay a letter. She unfolded it. Grandpa’s scrawl was barely legible, blotted and scratchy. But it was only a short message.

This is for you and nobody else. A woman should have at least something in the world.

Tilly refolded the note, placed everything back in the box, and snapped it shut. She pressed it against her chest, heart beating hard. “Thank you, Grandpa,” she breathed. “Thank you.”

By the time she arrived home, the chest was sent, and Grandpa wouldn’t speak of it. “It never happened,” he said, once again flat and limp in his bed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

•

Thud, thud, thud.

Tilly swam up through sleep.

Thud, thud.
“Miss Kirkland. Tilly.”

Tilly sat up, blinking her eyes open. Mrs. Granger’s voice at the door. She threw back the covers and moved to the bedroom door to open it. Mrs. Granger stood there, pale, holding a lamp.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s time. It’s his . . . his time.”

Grandpa
. Tilly grabbed her dressing gown from behind the door and pulled it on. Fast movements, cold heart. She hurried after Mrs. Granger and into Grandpa’s bedroom. All the lamps were lit, the nurse from the village who came to sit with him at night was there. It was too bright and noisy.

“Tilly,” Grandpa gasped. “I’m sorry to wake you, dear. But I won’t be here in the morning.”

Tilly sank down next to the bed and grasped his hands. His fingertips were worn smooth by the years. “Hush now, Grandpa. You don’t know that.”

“I do. I do,” he said, touching her hair softly. “I feel life drawing out of me like water runs out of the bath . . .” Deep, shaking breath. Huff. Huff. “Everybody . . . everybody out except Tilly. It is so crowded in here.”

Mrs. Granger and the nurse withdrew, the door shut behind them. Grandpa placed his cold fingers gently under Tilly’s chin and lifted her face to meet his gaze.

“I haven’t . . . been honest . . . with you,” he said.

“You have always been the best of men.”

“No . . . no, I . . . haven’t.” The big shuddering breath again, followed by the short series of huffs. “Listen . . . I knew Jasper . . . I already . . . knew Jasper.”

Tilly’s ears rang faintly. She was overwhelmed by sadness, puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a . . . proud girl . . . too proud . . . you wouldn’t . . . I had to . . .”

“Grandpa, all is well. Whatever you did, all is well.”

“Family friend . . . needed you to . . . think . . . it was . . . you who found him. Outside . . . the tailor . . .”

“Shhh, shhh. All is well. I love him, Grandpa, and as soon as you no longer need me, I will go to be with him and . . .” She fought back tears. She absolutely could not let Grandpa guess at the doubt that she felt.

He lifted the back of his hand to her cheek. “I no longer . . . need you . . . my Tilly. My good girl.” Breath. Huff. Huff. “My good girl.”

With sudden weight, his hand fell and lay on the covers, still and silent.

•

Tilly stood at the dock, her small trunk between her feet, her large trunk already loaded onto the steamer. She had come directly from Grandpa’s funeral. Pamela would have allowed her to presume one or two nights’ grace, perhaps, but Tilly was aching to go. She didn’t care to see Grandpa’s house in Godfrey’ and Pamela’s possession. No doubt they were already tearing down the drapes, moving the furniture, maybe even uprooting her garden beds to put in Godfrey’s long-imagined tennis court.

No letters had come. Nearly six weeks after her wedding, no letters had come. She had an address, a ticket across the sea, and a slowly eroding hope in her heart. Travelers bustled about her. A purser rang a bell up and down the dock, calling for the various classes to board. The air smelled of metallic water and coal. Amongst the confusion of sights, sounds, and smells, she tried to find a place of stillness and peace in her heart. Soon the uncertainty would be over. She would find her husband, or she would find that he had never been hers at all. Either way, the journey had begun.

T
he hackney coach rolled up the hill from farmlands and through the wood that bordered Jasper’s estate. Tilly’s chest drew tighter and tighter, the closer they drew to Lumière sur la Mer. Jasper had to be there. He had to. Or else . . . there was no alternative. He had to be there. They emerged from the wood, rocking and rattling, onto a smooth dirt road. Ahead, she could see the roof of the house. Her husband’s house.

Her house. Lumière sur la Mer. The light on the sea.

She breathed deeply, remembered the cigar box of money in her smaller trunk, and took a little comfort from it. Whatever happened, she would survive. She hoped to find Jasper, alive and well and with a completely reasonable explanation for the lack of correspondence. If he was ill or had . . . she steeled herself . . . simply not bothered to write, she could recover from that, too. But if he was dead or missing, then she feared for herself. Her heart, so recently damaged by the death of her beloved grandfather, could not bear another burden that great. Widowed while
still a virgin: that would surely make her the unluckiest woman in the world.

The carriage slowed and stopped. She gathered her courage. The footman came to open her door.

“Please,” she said. “Would you wait? I am . . . I am not sure if my husband is home and I have no key of my own.” If he wasn’t here, she had already planned to go to the local constabulary to ask them to help her, and imagined she would spend her nights boarding somewhere.

The footman nodded, and she stepped out of the coach and into the wild wind, down the little stair, and stood for a moment looking up at the façade of Lumière sur la Mer. It looked familiar from the card. Three storys, conservatory to the south, orchard to the north. But it was also unfamiliar. Those tangled gardens. The peeling blue paint on the door. The curtains all drawn as if ashamed of something.

“Madame?” the footman said.

“Yes, I will go now. Wait for me. Don’t unload the trunks . . . yet . . .”

One foot in front of the other, pulse speeding. Her eyes went left and right, noticing the overgrown grass between the poplars, the weeds growing in the urns where flowers should have been. It didn’t look as if anybody had lived here for a long time. Her heart caught in her throat. Now she expected the worst, the very very worst.

At the front door she paused for a breath, then raised her hand and knocked hard. Released the knocker and stood back, anxiously checking over her shoulder that the carriage hadn’t abandoned her here on the wrong side of the wood. A long silence, unbroken except for the wind and sea. The clattering streets of St. Peter Port, only two miles away, seemed very distant.

She could hear her own pulse.

And footsteps. She could hear footsteps within the house.

The door opened and her heart leapt.

“Jasper!” She launched herself into his arms and he took her firmly against him, his hands spread across her back.

“You’re here,” he said.

She stood back, beaming at him, all her worries melting away. He smiled in return. She noticed his hair was untidy, his clothes not as sharply pressed as she remembered. But he was still her Jasper, alive and well and here, at the home they were to share together. She turned to the footman and gestured, and soon her trunks were being brought up the path.

“I didn’t hear from you,” she said to Jasper. “Weeks and weeks. No letters.”

“I wrote at least half a dozen!” he protested. “But I had none from you. I thought you’d forgotten me!”

Tilly laughed. All along it had been some miscommunication beyond their control. She should have known it. She pressed herself against him again, and he kissed the top of her head and said, “I’m sorry, my dear, but things might not be as you expected.”

She looked up, into his gray eyes, and said, “You are here, alive and well in front of me. That is all I hoped for.”

“Your grandfather?”

The leaden sadness tempered her moment of joy. “He’s gone. Dead,” she said.

He touched her hair. “I am sorry, my dear. Come in,” he said. “Welcome to Lumière sur la Mer. Welcome to your home.”

While the footman bustled past with her trunks, and Jasper showed him where to leave them and paid him, Tilly removed her bonnet and gloves in the entrance hall to the house. The black and white tiles were as Jasper had described them, the ornate curved
stair. But where the chandelier had been there was an iron hook; where the side tables had been were empty spaces; and where the picture frames had hung were discolored squares on the wallpaper. She took it all in. The relief over finding Jasper alive and expecting her was so immense that she was incapable of feeling disappointed that the house wasn’t as grand as she’d anticipated.