Page 66 of The Lady's Companion
It was her father’s handwriting and the letters were addressed to Lady Bushnell and David Wiggins. Her first thought was to fling them into the fireplace, but there was no fire in the hearth. She was still sitting on the staircase steps when the bailiff came downstairs. He sat beside her obligingly, questioning her with his eyes.
“Love, if the weather saps your energy, go back to bed,” he told her. “I doubt that anything won’t keep until later in the day,except the harpsichord.” He smiled at her. It was already an old joke in their young marriage. Nothing deterred Lady Bushnell from Susan’s daily piano practice, not female complaints, or outside duties, or even the bailiff’s needs, after that first week of fervid marriage.
She nodded in the direction of the table. “Letters.”
A puzzled look on his face, he picked them up from the silver basket and sat beside her again. “One to me,” he said. “Well, don’t be so blue about it, Suzie. I don’t have a secret wife, and I’m not owing taxes.”
“It’s my father’s handwriting,” she said, her words clipped and shorter than she meant them to be.
“Don’t bite me now,” he said mildly.
Mrs. Skerlong came into the hall with Lady Bushnell’s breakfast tray. “She’s pulling her bell, Susan,” the housekeeper said as she edged up the stairs between them. The bailiff handed her the other letter. “Thank you, David.”
He borrowed one of her hairpins, slit the letter open, then replaced the pin. She felt him stiffen beside her as he read the letter, and read it again. “By damn,” he said finally when he finished the second reading. “By damn.” He looked at her, and it seemed to her, nerves on edge, that he shifted slightly away from her. “What a parent you have, Suzie. Thank God I’m a bastard.”
Her fingers almost numb, she snatched the letter from his outstretched hand. Her eyes filled with tears almost before she began, so on the first reading she saw only snatches of “Newgate,” and “debts,” and “no help from any source,” and “I’m relying on you.” Shocked down to her toenails, she swiped at her eyes with the hem of her dress before she turned the page over.
“You’ll like the back page even more,” her husband said. “Don’t miss a word of it.”
She glared at him, angry at his unexpected sarcasm, but she calmed herself enough to read every word. She read it again,even as her husband had done, nausea rising in her throat. “No,” she whispered. “How can he think...”
The bailiff took it from her and opened his mouth to speak, but stopped at the sound of Lady Bushnell’s cane beating on the floor. They looked at each other, and Susan saw her own reflection in the depths of his eyes. It did not please her, any more than the frown on his face. He stood up and helped her to her feet, then hurried ahead of her up the stairs.
“Susan, your father is a monster,” met her at the door like a lead wall. Lady Bushnell glared at her and thrust the letter at the bailiff, who read it, then stared at her, too. She leaned against the wall, afraid to come any further into the room.
“Oh, this is good, Lady B,” the bailiff said. He looked at her then. “Suzie, he asks... no, no, he demands that your employer pay him enough money to keep his sorry hide out of Newgate.” He looked down at the letter. “’Knowing how you feel about my daughter, I am sure you would not wish to see her suffer with the knowledge of my incarceration. Yours, sincerely, etc. etc.’”
“Someone should have shot him in a duel years ago,” Lady Bushnell said.
“Wait until you hear mine. Me, the lucky husband,” he said. Susan flinched at his angry words, swallowing her nausea with the greatest difficulty.
“Please don’t use that tone,” she pleaded.
“Maybe you can suggest a better one, after you hear this?” he snapped back. “Lady Bushnell, he asks me to doctor the estate books and send him two hundred pounds!”
“God!” Susan gasped. She sank to the floor, but no one noticed.
“Hear this, Lady B. ‘My own steward cheated me regularly, I am sure, so I know it can be done, depend upon it,’” he read, each word more clipped than the one before. With an oath that made her ears hum, he balled both letters, strode to the window, and threw them as far as he could. When he turned around,staring at her, his face was as hard as stone.
She could not meet his eyes, even as a voice inside her pleading “It’s not me,” tried to scratch its way out of her throat. To her ineffable relief, his expression changed. In another moment, he gave her a hand up from the floor and helped her to sit on Lady Bushnell’s bed. “I’m sorry, Suzie.”
For me, or for you, she wanted to whisper. His hand was heavy on her shoulder, and she felt weighed down, instead of buoyed up, as usual, by his touch. She couldn’t see his face, but she could see Lady Bushnell’s, and her pain reached full circle.
The widow lay back against her propped-up pillows, looking every minute of her years. She groped for Susan’s hand. “Dismiss it, Susan. He’s not worthy of a tenth part of you.” Her eyes seemed to fade and dim as she looked at the bailiff then, and Susan understood the source of her agony, even before she spoke of it. Oh don’t speak it, dear lady, she wanted to say.
“Sergeant Wiggins, do you understand what damage parents can do to children?” She made a fierce gesture with her hands that had nothing to do with old age about it. “We’ve just flayed Susan with our anger, and it’s not her fault.”
“I don’t mind,” she managed to whisper. “You didn’t mean it.”
Her hand tightened around Susan’s. “My dear, I am trying to point out to your lug-brained husband that parents can do some terrible things. I wonder if I am any better, but you will not tell me. Should I have forced Charles to take command of the regiment? Did I send a coward son to a living hell? Am I no better than Sir Rodney Hampton?”
Her voice was as loud as the bailiff’s had been a moment ago. Susan covered her ears with her hands. I cannot bear it if you lie or tell the truth, husband, she thought.
“He was no coward,” the bailiff lied.
“I don’t believe you,” the widow said.
“Then ask Susan and take her word over mine.” His angers bitinto her shoulder like an auger.
