Page 100 of A Devilish Element
“You don’t know how love feels. How it makes the heart sing and every waking breath sweeter. Eliza, I might be a ninny, but at least I felt something. At least I lived. I loved. And I wouldn’t change that. I would do it all over again, even knowing where it has led.”
“What you describe sounds very lopsided. Where is he now, Jane? This man who loved you so, and whom you so desperately adore? The truth is that he abandoned you. He did not love you. He used you. You were taken in by a rogue. If he’d loved you, if it’d been remotely real between you, he wouldn’t have filled your belly and then run for the hills leaving you no choice but to marry another rapscallion to preserve your reputation.”
Jane paled, and her lower lip began to wobble, but Eliza was not quite done. “And if you tell me now that he was unaware of your condition, then I shall think very poorly of you indeed for both your dishonesty, and not holding him to account.”
“I can’t… I can’t believe how horrid you are being.” Jane bit her lip, and snuffled, but soon wiped the tears from her cheeks and pulled herself together. “He did… He does know. I made him aware.”
“And he left anyway.”
Jane did not reply. She didn’t have to. The story was an all too familiar one.
“Who is he, Jane?” They were getting further away from the matter that needed dealing with and deeper into murky waters, but the opportunity for such directness might not occur again. “I don’t know why you won’t say, unless you fear I would recognise him. What do you imagine I’ll do? Challenge him?”
She very well might.
Jane stiffened her spine and pulled her shoulders back. Her head remained bowed as she sighed, then she looked Eliza straight in the eyes and said, “I’ve only ever known my husband carnally. It’s a tragedy that our time together was so short.”
Eliza gave a slow blink. So that’s how things were going to be. “You’d best hope the bairn is born with Linfield’s colouring. Tongues will certainly wag if the baby has black hair with Linfield and yourself so fair.”
“Of course it’ll be golden haired.”
So, the father was blond also. That didn’t narrow things down overly.
They stewed in uncomfortable silence for several minutes more, Jane pacing, Eliza noting details of the room like the fact it had doors in three of its six walls, each shooting the other uncomfortable glances but refusing to meet the other’s gaze.
“Do you not think capturing your husband’s killer might be beneficial?” Eliza eventually asked. Mrs Honeyfield could have packed her belongings and walked up onto the moors never to be seen again by now.
“I do,” she said with teeth clenched. “But at the same time, I’m still unconvinced, and I realise this is going to sound heartless, but I never even liked Linfield overly much. Obviously, I’m shocked and horrified by what has happened, but…” She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “But maybe it’s for the best. Maybe he even deserved it. Let us not pretend he was a nice man.”
That was something they could agree on. “Nevertheless, no one deserves to have their life snatched from them like that.”
Jane gave a modest snort. “Yes, I recall that about you. You were always the one arguing for lesser punishments and rehabilitation for villains during our philosophical debates. What was it you would say? ‘That it wasn’t anyone’s fault if they were born poor or unlovely, and that we oughtn’t to punish them for it. That we are all equal in God’s love and should be afforded the same dignity and respect.’ Except Linfield never did a thing to earn my respect. Mostly he mocked and belittled me. Truly, Eliza, I cannot be sad. Dying is probably the best thing he could ever have done for me. I wasn’t exactly relishing the mechanics of him finally bedding me.”
“Jane, if you keep saying such things, then I’ll begin to suspect you are at very least in collusion with Mrs Honeyfield.”
“Perhaps you have been reading too many horrid novels if you think I conspired with my housekeeper to do away with my husband.”
“It’s always the men who are diabolical creatures in those books,” Eliza pointed out.
Jane sat with a thump. She sagged forward from the shoulders and sighed into her hands as she covered her face. “I’m sorry. It is all just too much. Everything is buzzing around in my brain like a swarm of angry wasps. I am not used to being the one who must make decisions. It is not what I was bred for. Eliza, I’m not like you. I don’t like puzzles or unravelling conundrums. I just want things to be simple, and nothing here feels that way. If I send for the magistrate, then the earl might see me as a meddling woman who has brought outside attention onto something he would rather handle in his own way. But, as you say, if I do nothing, then it makes me look unfeeling at best, and guilty at worst.”
She flopped backwards so that she was looking at the canopy. Eliza sat alongside her, suddenly bone-tired of arguing. Sometimes, it was wiser to save your breath, and act alone, than exhaust yourself trying to win people to your cause.
“How soon do you mean to negotiate with George?”
“Soon.”
“What if I went for the magistrate?”
Jane pushed herself up on her elbows. “Eliza Wakefield, you are not marching across the moors in the mist gone midnight.”
“Frightened a boggart’ll get me?”
“No,” Jane confessed with a sad shake of her head. “I’m worried one might come for me if you’re not here to see them off.”
“Well,” Eliza said, getting to her feet. “I can’t sit and do nothing.” She had to assume that neither Bell nor Jem had acted as she’d bid them do. “I mean to find Mrs Honeyfield and confine her to her quarters. Then, I shall see if I can track down a footman to send for the magistrate. I shan’t mind in the slightest if the earl sees me as a meddlesome woman. This is of course assuming I can find any servant at all in this place, and they haven’t all already departed with your silverware ahead of the Cedarton ghost eating their faces off.”
“I don’t think I should accompany you to do that.”
