A Spark Unseen

Are you in need of a doctor, perhaps, or a glass a wine?”

This little speech was followed by all sorts of agreeable and sympathetic chirping from the girls, though Mrs. Hardcastle was quiet and intent, watching through the pince-nez. I straightened my back and cut through the chatter.

“So, Mr. Moreau, will you go to Mrs. Reynolds’s? Will you ‘pursue your art’? Is that your choice?”

Lane’s gray gaze had never yet left me. His hands came up slowly and slid into his pockets. I heard Henri light a cigarette. “No,” he said finally. “No, that is not my choice. I thought I might try America for a time.”

“America,” I repeated.

He closed his eyes for just a moment. Noble, I thought. He believed he was being noble.

“So is that what you want, Mr. Moreau?”

“No,” he said. “But don’t you think it’s best?”

I was so angry I wanted to hit him with another brick. “Eighteen months,” I said. “You leave without warning — and yes, I know why you went — but you allow eighteen months to go by without a line or a note. And do not tell me you didn’t trust the post. You could have done something to tell me you were alive, drawing breath, and capable of holding a pen. Couldn’t you, Mr. Moreau?”

“Yes.”

The four ladies’ faces swung back to me. “Only you chose to be silent. Is that correct, Mr. Moreau?”

“Yes.”

“And for more than two months I held the belief that you were alive despite every obstacle, against the word of my closest friend.” I saw Mary sit down on the landing above me. “The word of my solicitor, and what was supposed to be the British government. And then I came to Paris, inconveniencing the livelihoods of eight hundred and forty-nine people, distressing my most dear and beloved relative, traipsing across sea and the continent to find you, and all because you chose not to write. Is that correct, Mr. Moreau?”

“Yes.”

“Then explain yourself.” I lifted my chin, and the four sets of eyes in the salon door went as one to Lane. I watched him coiling like a spring.

“All right. You want to hear an explanation? I’ll give it to you. Do you have any idea, Miss Tulman,” he was as deliberate on my name as I had been on his, “do you have any notion at all, what they are saying about you in London?”

I felt myself tense.

“Well, I do. Aunt Bit told me, she showed me letters. Filthy, nasty gossip, and it wasn’t just London, it was in the village, too. Tattling ladies at their kitchen windows and men at the docks, the ones that didn’t know you, that liked to listen to rumors. And do you know why they were saying those things, dragging your name through the muck? It wasn’t because of you, Miss Tulman. It was because of me!” This last had been almost a shout, one finger slamming into the center of his chest. “Me! Not you! Because when I was born, your grandmother paid my father a wage!”

I felt one hot tear slide down my cheek. My grandmother had certainly never paid his father a wage, but Lane would never know that. He was mesmerizing, just as he’d been in the cavern, but this pain was very real, and it hurt me.

“Do you have any idea what it was like to walk down the village lane and hear those things? To have your house pointed out to me in Paris?” He flung out a hand at the women beside him. “Do you know what those ladies said you were … in front of me?” One of the Miss Mortimers put a gloved hand to her mouth. “I did not write, Miss Tulman, so you could be free of all that.”

“And I suppose,” I said quietly, “that you thought the loss of my good name would be too much for me. Would have me flying to pieces and make my life unlivable. Well, thank you so much for making that decision for me, Mr. Moreau. It was obviously my good name I was searching every hospital in Paris for!”

“She has you on that one, mon ami,” said Henri.

“Mr. Moreau, I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself and continuing on at Stranwyne on my own.” And I could, I realized. I had been. “But I believe it is a question of more, rather than less.”

He looked up sharply, and I saw that the significance of these words had not been lost on him.

“Whatever you think you should have done and didn’t over the past few days … I believe that you made a choice, and that it was correct.” I would never tell him he’d been contemplating the murder of his half brother. “I know it to have been correct. Someone very wise once told me that you always know what is right, and I believe him. I think to have done differently would have made you … less. I do not think you could have lived with less. I, personally, prefer to live with more, and don’t care a whit what those ladies over there think of it.”

He ran a hand through his hair.

“Do you love me?” I asked.

All heads swiveled to Lane. He closed his eyes, so he didn’t have to look at me.

“Do you?”

“No,” he said, voice firm. Then he opened his eyes and his shoulders slumped. “Yes. But I have nothing to offer.”

“What do you want to offer?”

He cocked his head. “What do you want?”

“What do you think I want?”

The heads of the ladies bounced back and forth in unison.

“Home?” he tried.

“I have that. It happens to be the same as yours. Unless you prefer America.”

“Position?”

“No. I don’t want that. Do you?”

“Not really.”

“Good. We both seem to be fresh out, anyway.”

“Family?”

“Mine’s rather dodgy.” But not as much as yours, I thought.

“I’ve got Aunt Bit.”

“She’s practically my aunt, anyway.”

“Money, then?”

“Hmm. I have property, but possibly not much in the way of cash. You could bring that to the table, if you wished.”

A small silence followed this, while Lane considered. After a few moments, he shrugged.

“Then we can proceed on those terms, Mr. Moreau?”

“Yes, I suppose we can.”

“Good. Then I have one more question of importance for you. What is your relationship with Marie LeFevre?”

All the heads swiveled back to Lane. “What do you mean, exactly, Miss Tulman?”

“I mean that she seems extraordinarily fond of you and rather … robust in her constitution.”

A rush of French began from the library doors, from both Joseph and Jean-Baptiste. Henri began translating from behind me.

“The sister of Joseph and Jean-Baptiste seems to have had an … entanglement with a boy who Jean-Michel put on a train to Nice before Joseph could do something … unfortunate to his person, therefore saving the tender feelings of the sister, and Joseph some time in purgatory.” Jean-Baptiste said something else, and Henri said, “And she is so grateful, this sister, that now they meet Jean-Michel on street corners and leave their sister at home, as is best. That is all.”

I looked back to Lane, and so did everyone else. A tiny flush was creeping beneath his tan skin. “That seems satisfactory,” I said.

Lane raised his brows, and we looked at each other across the marble tiles of my grandmother’s foyer.

“So, you’re coming home with me, then?”

“Yes.”

“And that is what you choose?”