6.
Capturing the Castle
May, 1915
"Richard, please," Mary snapped. "You're taking the notion of safe driving to a new extreme."
"I don't know what you mean," Richard replied, keeping his eyes on the lane ahead. "Branson must be a reckless chauffeur, because I can assure you I am driving in the appropriate manner."
Mary raised her eyebrows under her hat, trying to catch his eye as he resolutely avoided her gaze. "Well, this journey is proving interminable. I can't think why you wanted to drive."
"The trains are hardly reliable at the moment. I imagined you wouldn't wish to be turned onto the track, in favour of a band of soldiers." He looked at her briefly to see her lips tense for a moment, before an imperious expression returned.
"That would hardly be a sacrifice in comparison to theirs."
"Ideologically, that is true. But I'm not sure you would be quite so magnanimous on a train platform in some godforsaken place miles from the border." He smiled, and watched her shoulders relax as she conceded the point.
"Very well, you win. There is nothing wrong with the motor, but I must say your driving style is something of a surprise."
"Oh? You were expecting more of a devil-may-care attitude?" His hands in their leather gloves flexed on the steering wheel, as he resisted the urge to push the impressive horse power of the engine to its limit.
"Yes, I think I was."
"I must be proving a disappointment," Richard replied, tilting his chin and giving Mary a sidelong look.
"I wouldn't say that," she smiled, and he reached to take her hand, squeezing her fingers through the glove. "Gracious, darling, you've taken a hand from the steering wheel," Mary teased.
"Will that do for the dangerous element of this journey?"
"That depends. Is this as reckless as you intend to be on this trip?" Mary replied, as he kissed her hand and let it go.
"I thought I'd shown you just how wanton I'm capable of being," Richard replied. "You must need reminding."
"Perhaps I do."
Richard felt his concentration slipping away, as he experienced an acute desire to pull over and look at her fully without needing to return his eyes to the road. He cleared his throat to speak but was interrupted by Mary. "On reflection, I think the result of your wanton behaviour is making me rather nauseous. Can we stop?"
She looked decidedly green, and Richard slowed to pull the Rolls Royce onto a muddy verge of turned earth beside a five-barred gate. He peered out the window at the gathering clouds, torn grey tissue strewn across a vaulted sky, as Mary hastily opened the door and stood outside the car with one hand over her mouth and the other pressed against the silver bodywork. Richard nudged open the driver's door and picked his way over the rutted earth to her side. "Can I get you something?"
"A bucket?" Mary mumbled, from behind her glove. Richard reached into his pocket to withdraw a silver hip flask, unscrewing the cap and holding it out to her. "I don't suppose that's water?" she asked.
"Whiskey." He shrugged.
She took it, taking a sip, and handing it back with a trembling hand, before removing her gloves and reaching into her coat pocket to withdraw a handkerchief and dab her lips.
"Better?" Richard asked, his eyebrows knitting, as he watched a tinge of colour return to her cheeks.
"Certainly no worse."
"There's a hamper on the back seat. Perhaps you should eat a sandwich?" Richard adjusted his trilby and opening the back door of the car to examine the contents of the picnic basket.
"What's in them?"
"Cheese and pickle?" he replied, taking the tea towel containing the sandwiches from the hamper, and opening it to examine them further.
Mary grimaced. "I think I won't."
"I will then," he said, tucking the package of sandwiches under his arm and removing his gloves, laying them carelessly on the soft roof of the car. "What?" Richard swallowed a mouthful of the sandwich in his hand and returned her frown, his lips twitching. "Am I not showing enough solidarity for your suffering?"
Mary pursed her lips. "I don't expect you to starve."
"Well, I don't want you to starve either," he said, putting the half eaten sandwich down beside the gloves, and slipping his hand around her waist. "You didn't eat breakfast."
"I'm afraid kedgeree was the very last thing I felt like eating this morning. At least I was able to not eat in the privacy of my room." She reached to smooth the lapels of his jacket as he pulled her against him.
"One of the privileges of being a married woman."
"Mm, one of many." Mary slipped her hands either side of the v in his waistcoat, her fingers pressing against his chest.
"Are you trying to prevent me from eating the rest of that sandwich?" he asked, relieved to see the grey tinge had faded from her face, although she was still paler than normal.
"I'm sorry if my being unwell is distracting you from your elevenses."
"You don't seem terribly unwell now," Richard murmured as she kissed his neck, her tongue stinging a patch of skin reddened by his morning shave.
"I think the least you can do is to continue to revive me."
"But not with a cheese and pickle sandwich?"
"No." He could feel her smooth lips, in the groove at the base of his throat, and he closed his eyes to savour the sensation.
"If I hadn't seen the colour drain from your face, I would think this a ruse to engineer an intermission in our journey," Richard said, moving his hands from where they rested in the small of her back, to undo the buttons of her coat. She drew back, removing her hat, as his hands slid inside the coat, almost spanning her waist, his rough fingers catching on the silk of her blouse as he sought to untuck it from her skirt. He sighed at meeting the restriction of her corset. "You wear too many clothes."
"Does that dampen your ardour?"
"Delays rather than dampens, I think." He pulled her to lean against him, and kissed her, his hands gripping her hips. "And I look forward to the day you're forced to stop wearing a corset."
"That shows how little you know about women's fashion, darling. There is a corset for every state," Mary said, her hand resting on his cheek, smoothing the angle of his cheekbone.
"How tiresome," Richard replied, as she linked her arms behind his neck, flicking her hat onto the car roof behind him. "I shall have to simply keep you out of it as much as possible." He let his fingers travel to the ribbons that met in the centre of her back, slowly pulling a lace through, so the arrangement unraveled under his hands.
"Richard," Mary said, in a tone of half hearted admonishment, her eyes shining as she looked into his. "We're standing by the side of a road."
"You're right," he said, ducking his head to plant a kiss on the tender skin between her jaw and ear. "Quite scandalous." Richard moved to one side to the open door and sank down onto the back seat, nudging the hamper away. He turned her around to guide her down into his lap, easing her coat from her shoulders.
"You need to see what you're doing?" she asked, slightly breathlessly, as he kissed a line down the side of her neck and over the notch in her shoulder, the blouse slipping away where she had unbuttoned it.
He felt thin fingers kneading his own shoulder, a papery hand he knew not to be there. A bony digit pressed down on the bone at the tip of his shoulder, like a point on a map. This is where you lost your wings.
Who said that? A crawling sensation rose and fell beneath his skin, sending a tingle from the back of his neck to the bottom of his spine, and his fingers stilled where they were constricted between the fabric and crossed laces. They kept you warm when you were cold.
Sour, tired breath on his cheek. A face out of sight behind him. The feel of a wet apron as she lent forward to pour cold water over his back. Pinpricks all over his skin, erupting over every bony prominence. And now they are gone, you will always be cold.
"Richard?" Mary asked, and he realized his forehead was bowed against the warm nape of her neck.
"Are you cold?"
"No," she replied. "Are you?"
"I wonder if I am." He was glad she was facing away from him as he loosened the pulled ribbons, and he spoke gruffly, hoping that she might not hear him. Richard's hands moved around to the front of the busk to unhook the clasps, but he fumbled, the sensation in his fingertips seeming chilled, like getting dressed in a silver light, a frost in shards of glass across the blanket.
"What do you mean?" she asked, after a pause, turning her head to look over her shoulder at him.
"Am I cold and calculating?" He could see her profile, and she frowned, taking his hands where they rested over her stomach.
"I think that's rather a strange sort of question to ask on your honeymoon," Mary said, her slender thumbs rubbing along the thin bones on the backs of his hands, like the hammers inside a piano.
"Yes, it is. I apologise." He pressed his lips to the curve of her shoulder.
"I'm not sure you're going to be able to lace me back into this corset in quite so tidy a manner as Anna."
The cold dispersed, and he stretched his hands beneath hers, his fingers regaining the strength to release the series of hooks. "Who said anything about lacing you back?"
Mary sighed, as he parted the halves of boned satin and pulled it away from her back, then unbuttoned the side of her skirt with practiced ease. He inhaled her perfume; it evaporated into his mind and dispelled the memories that threatened to impinge on this moment, seeking him out on a deserted country lane under an ominous sky, wisps of a past hardly remembered, barely thought of, vapourised into trembling minutiae, the smell of impending rain and fragrant unblemished skin overwhelming. He allowed himself to be overwhelmed, to forget, to allow it no further, a hand pushed away, so he could only feel Mary. Richard smoothed his hands over her bare hips under the chemise, and felt her tremble beneath his touch as he moved his palms to lie across her stomach. "Are we to hope this baby arrives rather late?"
"Clarkson said December, so I think asking for an extra eight weeks might be a little unrealistic."
"Do we confess?" Richard asked, his chin resting over her shoulder.
"I think that would be a terribly awkward conversation, and one I'd rather put off until absolutely necessary. I hope that the relief when we tell them that the baby hasn't, in fact, arrived too early at all, will offset the breach of propriety."
"Is that what you think your father would call it. A breach of propriety?" Richard smirked.
"I think he might call you a few choice things, hopefully in private."
"I would say I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'm not."
"It may work more in your favour if you refrain from saying that to my father," Mary replied.
"Is he going to take me out and shoot me?"
"Lets hope not."
Richard thought of Robert's face as he handed Mary over at the altar, their eyes meeting briefly. If the other man thought he could cow him, he was very much mistaken, and if a strained acceptance was the best he could hope for from Mary's family, then that is what he would take. He needed nothing from them, had needed no one for the largest portion of his life, and approval was a by-product, a bonus to whatever he achieved for himself. It did matter to Mary, though, and the more composed she was the more she was trying to pretend that it didn't.
"I plan to be a model son-in-law," he told her.
"And husband?" Mary asked.
"An ideal husband."
"Oh, I don't think I should like that," she recited, with a smirk.
"Well, as ideal as one can be in this world," Richard grinned, kissing her neck. "Shall we resume our journey? I'm not sure you want to see how carefully I drive once night falls."
"I don't think I do. And I want to see where we're going. You've hardly told me anything." Mary slid off his knee taking her blouse from where it lay behind her in his lap and slipping it back on over her chemise.
"A castle. What more do you need to know?" He pushed up from the seat, taking her coat to help her into it.
"Are you going to regale me with tales of William Wallace?" Mary asked, turning to him, her chin tilted.
"I will strike a bargain with you." He kissed her lips once, gently. "You leave the corset in the car, and I will keep the Scottish history lesson to the bare essentials."
"There's a conspiracy here," Richard said, throwing his hat onto the bed and passing a hand through his hair to smooth it. "Carson has been communing with that sinister housekeeper, in an attempt to force me to see the error of my ways." He raised his eyebrows at Mary, whose lips twitched with amusement as he approached her. "To persuade me that the proper place for a husband is in a separate room, unless a written invitation is received from one's wife." He took her hands in his.
"You don't need an invite." She smiled. "Written or otherwise."
"That is a relief. I thought I would have to remain in that adjoining room with the door firmly locked. She looked at me as if I intended to steal the crown jewels when I asked for the key."
"We won't tell her you've already had your wicked way with me."
Mary thought he looked a little tired; and she suspected his tense driving style had not come entirely naturally, a sigh of relief had escaped his lips as her own breath stalled at the sight of the castle rearing ahead of them. She had never been to a castle and Richard could hardly have chosen a more impressive one. A sheer cliff face fell away on three sides, a formidable imposing structure atop the crag, rock that looked as if it could wash away in layers at any moment, as if parts of it already had. The castle didn't teeter; it was as complete, as staunch as if it had risen fully formed from the womb of the cliff itself. Inside, unsurprisingly, it was cold and imposing, the servants who greeted them as chilled as the atmosphere that seeped from behind tapestries of red and gold. Overwhelmingly, it was grey, and the people in it were grey, and she and Richard seemed like a burst of foreign colour. The housekeeper, a Mrs Ludlock, had turned eyes like black pearls on Richard, and regarded him as if he were an apparition, a visitor from the future, a spectre to be looked through rather than at. Mary could hardly understand whatever she muttered beneath her breath. Richard had nodded and smiled, and afterwards admitted that he had no idea what she was saying either, but that it sounded like an incantation. Mary shuddered at the memory, dismissing the feeling they were entering a gothic ghost story.
"Do you think Mrs Ludlock is going to drag me out of this bedroom by my ear?"
"I need you here for warmth if nothing else," Mary said, glancing at the empty grate.
Richard kissed her hand. "I'll ring for someone to light it," he paused. "Unless you can think of another way to warm up?"
"A brisk walk?" She raised an eyebrow, her hand moving to his collar to loosen his tie.
"I'm going to take a brisk walk to the door and lock it," Richard said. "Or I shall not be able to shake the feeling that that woman might appear at the end of the bed at any moment."
Mary laughed. "What a ghastly thought!"
"With any luck she's in her sitting room clutching her rosary in time for the Angelus," he said, his back to her as he twisted the key in the lock.
"The Angelus?"
"It's six o'clock," he said, a small shrug of his shoulders, his palms open at his sides.
"Are you a Catholic?"
"Don't look quite so horrified, my dear," he replied. "I'm not an anything now, but it is not always possible to forget what one recites as a child."
"Indeed," she replied, choice verses from a particularly pious governess fluttering in her mind briefly.
"Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum," he recited, and Mary thought those unfamiliar Latin words sounded very strange on his lips.
It was difficult to imagine Richard as a small child at his mother's knee, examining his conscience before bed, bended head and clasped hands. Make my body pure, and my soul holy. Edith had prayed the most fervently when they were in the nursery, through gritted teeth, forehead pressed against the bedframe so it left a red mark on her white skin. What do you need to ask God so desperately for? Mary had sneered, and her sister would not reply, turning away as if in possession of a particularly delicious secret. What was the secret? What inspired such comfort, Mary did not know. She knew that when she prayed it was out of desperation, a last resort and as such, meant nothing. As a group they attended church in the village, in the family pew in the front row, on show, a symbol of aristocratic piety. Her mother's expression was always the same, head inclined to one side, eyes narrowed, a benevolent smile on her lips, and even as a small child, Mary could never dismiss the idea that Mama was not listening.
"Will we be punished for our sins?" Mary asked wondering how much genuine anxiety existed in the question.
"Not on this mortal plane."
"Is there any other?" she asked, as he swept his arm around her back.
"I can't say I care to know." Richard replied, his fingers travelling to the pins in her hair. "I have no interest in the resurrection to eternal life."
"I think it's too late for my immortal soul."
"I'm inclined to agree," he whispered, dipping his head to kiss her neck as he released her hair in tendrils down her back.
"Why did you convert?"
"Hmm?" he mumbled, his hand slipping from her hair to undo her skirt.
"From Catholicism?"
"Can we have this theological discussion at some distant point in the future?" he asked, un-tucking her blouse. "Perhaps on my death bed?"
Mary relented. She didn't know why it mattered, or if it did matter at all. She stepped out of her skirt and they fell back onto the bed. The heavy embroidered counterpane was cold, starched and uncomfortable, so Richard tugged it away to reveal what seemed to be countless layers of velvet throws. The canopy above them was a deep navy blue, embroidered with gold stars, stitched constellations, which, for all Mary knew about astronomy, seemed to be in their correct positions. Above the carved headboard, a pattern of ivy whittled into the edge, there was a dark wooden cross, a silver figure of Christ, nailed. Into Your hands I commit my spirit. Richard's cool hands sliding against the silk of her blouse refocused her attention, and she caught his lips with hers, allowing her teeth to sink slightly into his skin so that she felt the rumble of a groan where her hand rested on his chest.
"This is what I wanted to do to you by the road," he said, divesting himself of his trousers and socks.
"Yet you showed remarkable restraint," she replied, threading her arms across the back of his neck, her leg wrapping round his waist where he lay beside her.
"I was being sensitive." He grinned, giving her hip a squeeze.
He was sensitive. She supposed he needed to be, to collect the strands of truth and lies and weave them into something worth publishing, to transform them into black and white without slandering the subject, or misleading the public. He was careful, too; he was careful of her, and her feelings, in a way that was quite different to anything she had experienced before. She had never been an over sensitive child, possibly because by the time anyone threw insults at her she was old enough, and composed enough, to fling something better back, something that would stick, and not merely slide from an exterior polished, and clean. And, really, who had ever tried to deliberately hurt her feelings? Only Edith, and she was a conspicuously poor sparring partner, even when she held something with the fire to burn the house down around them, in her hands.
No, Mary was not used to verbal assaults; it was more insidious than that, a seeping coolness in the veins, a tingling across her forehead when it seemed that to marry well was all she could hope for, that to have Downton for herself was a dream that no-one believed possible, that they didn't believe in her, that she wasn't something more, someone worth fighting for, someone to provide with the ammunition so she could fight for herself. Wasn't that a misnomer? She wasn't Richard; she couldn't make something out of nothing, build an empire out of the dirt. He understood; it seemed he did, at least, and he was careful, careful never to completely denounce everything she had thought she should expect from life. He tolerated and humoured her family, even as they watched him stiffly, suspiciously, and he was generally good-humoured about thinly veiled barbs aimed in his direction. She wondered if they stuck, those things not said - humming between the lines - like they did to her, burrowing just under the surface of the skin as no verbal attack ever could. You must pay no attention to the things I say. It was the things she couldn't say, they were what mattered. Her father wouldn't pursue the inheritance for her because he could not win, but she felt that Richard would never admit as such, even if it was true, he would never let her think he would stop short of even the most hopeless battle.
All this from a man she had barely known six months. There was so much she still didn't know, even as she learnt every grip and feel of his body. His shirt removed, Mary ran her slender fingers down his side, over his ribs, tentatively across the scars she couldn't ask about. The skin from around his hip to the centre of his back was rutted and white, as if it had been squeezed and creased like fabric and then replaced so the seams didn't quite meet.
"It's a burn," Richard said, his eyes meeting hers.
Mary shook her head slightly, embarrassed, her hand flinching back from him. "I'm sorry…"
"I'm afraid it's an unpleasant story, not one I think you'd care to hear." He smoothed her cheek. "I keep my scars on the outside."
"You don't take things to heart?"
He silenced her with a kiss, the chill of the air in the room diminishing beneath the layers of blankets now pulled on top of them. Their lips parted slowly, his fingers entwined with hers. "Don't lets talk of hearts."
They spoke as chords do from the string, And blood burnt round my heart.
He was not an impenetrable vessel. What did it mean to take something to heart? To remember a moment, something that wounded, then wrap it, fold it and press it into a corner of an organ meant for pumping blood. No, his heart was silent, but for the pounding where her hand rested over it now. The mind was made for love, for exploring and unraveling its complexities and details, for feeling the depths that it could provide, to burn in the blood and fire the senses. Richard's chest tightened, contracting between his ribs, his hand releasing hers, fingertips trailing in circles over her skin, from her collarbone, between her breasts, to her stomach. A week ago, in Mary's darkened bedroom, she had fallen asleep against his chest almost immediately, relieved and unburdened, but he had lain awake until a silver light infused the gaps in the curtains. He had never given much thought to the prospect of being a father before, except vaguely, when avoiding such dangers with the casual partners he had had over the years. Women, who now, he could not visualize, a rainbow of expensive gowns, a drunken grasping hand at the front of his shirt, all terribly insignificant, and shallow, even at the time. There was nothing shallow about his desire for Mary; it burrowed into his marrow.
He could be a father; he could learn how to do it, like everything else. It wound through his mind the night she had told him, as dawn approached, as he listened to her soft breathing, and he thought of his own father. His father bent over the work bench, his sinewy arm sweeping back and forth as he varnished the panel of wood, the glossy lid of a coffin. If he caught Richard looking, his narrow face creased and he mumbled something, indicating for him to return to work on his own task. An honest day's work, for the only result that mattered: food on the table. If there was food on the rickety bench in the corner of the room then the job was done, the duty was fulfilled, and that was what a father did. Well, that was easy enough, and it would not be something that -barring complete ruin - Richard would ever have to worry about. He had the freedom to be a different kind of father, one who listened, advised, played. Not that his father had never taught him anything, but it was conveyed in gasps, snatches between frantic bone crushing poverty, the occasional confusing chess game. Then when Richard learned how to play properly, his father was unable to grasp the new rules, this change in the game, he was overtaken and Richard left him behind.
He that teaches himself has a fool for a master, his father had muttered. I didn't teach myself, Richard had objected, and his father had shaken his head, I wasn't talking about you, laddie. There was intelligence there, in his father's pale eyes but it was dulled, tired by a relentless crushing earth under which nothing could flourish. Richard was an apt pupil, and he absorbed everything that anyone could teach him. Perhaps his father had taught him more than he knew, maybe those lessons would only be realized when he was a father himself.
Richard kissed his wife's smooth, upturned lips as he lowered himself carefully over her, her legs hooking around his hips and drawing him down on top of her, so that the muscles of his arms tensed in an effort to stay upright. "I'm not made of glass," she whispered into his mouth.
The maid cleared away the supper things, the silver platters jangling as she returned them to the trolley. The heat in the bedroom seemed to emanate from the stone, the flames humming in the fireplace and licking their dark shadows across the tapestries hanging on the walls. The maid, Rebecca, an uncommonly nervous creature, dipped and curtsied each time she accidentally caught Mary or Richard's eyes, and mumbled something about returning when summoned to ready Mary for bed.
"I don't think I can bear to ring for her again." Mary rolled her eyes from her seat across the small table, as the sound of the cart trundled away down the corridor. "Are we so very terrifying?"
Richard shrugged, stretching back in his own chair and reaching for his gold-plated cigar case on the side table beside him. "It's probably the fact I'm dining in my dressing gown, isn't it?"
"Probably," Mary said. "I don't think I did a terribly good job of re-pinning my hair, either."
"They're used to Lord Lohearn. I shouldn't imagine that maid knows anything about the latest hairstyles." He struck the match and lit the cigar, the flame sending a bright highlight across his high cheekbone.
"And where is he?"
"Oh, somewhere around the place, I should imagine." He blew out a ring of smoke, and laughed when Mary's eyes widened, glancing around her as if she expected the Earl to leap out from behind the bureau.
"No, in all seriousness, he's at Balmoral, overseeing the landscaping of the south gardens. He's an ancestor of William Chambers, did you know that?"
"No, I didn't," she turned her teacup around on the saucer, a chase of branches around the rim bearing delicately painted red apples. "How do you know him?"
"He was one of my first investors." Richard rested his ankle across his knee, puffing on the cigar. "I was lucky to cross his path."
"Or, he was lucky to cross yours?"
Richard inclined his head back to blow the wisps of smoke towards the vaulted ceiling. "Neither of us has done badly from the association."
"But he took a chance with you?"
"With a skinny upstart from the tenements? Yes, he did. He invited me here, pledged his funding and support, and offered to educate me in the machinations of high society," he paused, his lips twitching around the end of the cigar. "And, how best to manipulate money from those with a great deal of it."
"So, even you can't make something from nothing." Mary raised a challenge, and he smiled, his eyes shining.
"Not a business empire, no, that is not how the world works." He rested the cigar in the cut glass ashtray on the side table, and stood, adjusting his dressing gown belt and moving round the table to lean over and kiss her, his hand covering her cheek. "I'll need your help to make a dynasty."
"I think we're already fully invested in that enterprise," she replied, taking hold of one of his lapels and pulling him down for another kiss, the woody taste of his cigar on her tongue, as her hand threaded through the hair at the back of his head. "Shall we go back to bed?"
"Were you a very skinny child?" Mary asked, her head on Richard's warm chest, where she felt the rumble of a chuckle at her question.
"I haven't always been in possession of such an athletic physique, no," he replied, adjusting his position, one arm behind his head against the headboard. "As difficult to believe as that is."
Mary swatted his chest with a smirk. "Edith went through a terrible chubby stage. She was awfully self- conscious."
"I'm sure you were the model of sisterly understanding."
"I'm a little ashamed to say that I teased her mercilessly," she replied. She did feel a tingle of shame when she thought of Edith's downturned mouth and quivering bottom lip, as her own tongue issued a barbed jibe or retort. Ten years ago, Mary and Edith were having furious rows, flouncing down the gallery, firing bitter words and needling each other about the tiniest of minutiae. Mary found she could not imagine what Richard might have been doing at the same age. Was he at school, at work? Her husband hadn't materialized into the man he was now, there was something before, but that something seemed like a ghost, rather than an evolution. "Were you never cruel as a child?"
"All children are cruel."
"I suppose that's true. Especially to one's siblings, who you love without meaning to," she replied, lacing her fingers through his where they rested on her waist beneath the blankets.
"I'm afraid the sibling bond, or lack thereof, is a mystery to me."
"Papa once told me that our siblings teach us how to love, and to hate. How to forgive."
"Mine taught me about futility and loss," Richard replied.
"Oh, Richard." She twisted to look up at him, and he avoided her gaze for a moment, her fingers fanning apart on his chest.
"Life passes through, in places like that. You would not believe what it was like." His eyes flickered to hers, and they were dark, heavy.
"Tell me," she said.
"No."
"Why not?"
There was something in each line of his face, each sharp curve, a flitting shadow that cut and divided until she looked at him so hard he grew unfamiliar. "I don't like to contemplate how fragile life is, and how easily it can be taken away. It is hard to imagine here, but there, in one dark room, in one dirty leaking tenement, you can only lose."
"You didn't."
"Yes, I did," Richard replied. "Which is why I got out." His features softened, and he moved his other hand from behind his head to smooth her cheek.
"And how did you do that?" Mary pressed.
"With my fists first." He jerked his eyebrows, a spark returning to his eyes.
"Richard 'Knockout' Carlisle?" she smiled, pressing a finger to his lips.
He smiled back. "I'm not going to tell you what my nickname was."
Mary's eyebrows arched. "Are you telling me you fought enough to have a nickname?"
"Without a snappy nickname I'd have been laughed out of the ring."
This time Mary's eyes widened, despite herself. "The ring?"
"I will assume you have never attended a boxing match, but you do at least realise such things occur inside a ring between two competitors?"
"Well, yes…"
"I was knocked unconscious during a fight, so I decided to stop, but I missed the money, so a new venture had to be found. One that was less of a risk to my handsome features," he grinned, back on safe ground, almost. "I'm sure you don't want to imagine me sweating, bloodied and punching someone with my bare fists."
"No, I don't." Mary felt a tingle of warmth on her cheeks, and the corner of his mouth tweaked.
"Offending your delicate feminine sensibilities?" he teased. "Or inflaming them?"
Mary sat up slowly, turning to face him fully before moving to sit across his lap, taking his face between her hands. She smoothed her thumbs over the ridges beneath his eyes, her fingers in the tender angles of his jaw. She could feel his large hands pressing her hips, and she thought of them clenched and bleeding, raised and pressed against his cheekbones, fight or fall. The closest she had ever come to witnessing a fight was watching Cousin Patrick and an unfortunate school chum falling over each other, grappling uselessly at clothes and hair, after the latter had tried to kiss her. Shocked and then coolly amused, summed up her response at the time, and what she had enjoyed most, of course, was the open mouthed disbelief of her mother, who had found them and separated them inexpertly, the pearls around her wrist snapping and trembling down all over the floor like marbles. Never watch two men fight over you, my dear, it isn't ladylike, Mama had said, lips quivering as she glowered at the disheveled boys. Mary had agreed, such displays were highly undesirable, and unnecessary. Richard was different, his whole world had depended on drawing blood, perhaps it still did, and she let herself think of him, coiled and raw, as he tilted his head to kiss her neck.
"I think you are less easily offended than people might think," he murmured against her skin. "A storm of passion beneath that polished exterior."
"Do you think so?" Mary whispered, wrapping her arms behind his neck.
"I know so," he replied, catching her lips with his, so that the depth of his kiss swept through her, a current beneath the still surface. Because she wasn't still, not really, she was controlled, perfectly controlled, until now, with him, with someone who did not ask that she be perfect. She bit his bottom lip, the metallic taste of blood stinging her tongue as he lifted her in his lap, breaking their kiss momentarily, so that she almost thought the skin from his lip was still between her teeth as she gasped. Her knees pressed tightly against his hips, and she shivered, wondering how she could be so completely together, joined, to someone who was so different, who shot through her and set alight a release she had not known she could feel. She could allow herself to break a little, to let someone else through to occupy what was empty or untouched, for a brief intoxicating moment. Let this not be brief. She had not held onto Matthew, he slipped through her fingers all too easily. Richard held her as if he would never let go, and she returned his grip, crying out and pressing her lips to his forehead.
He buried his face against her chest, and she could feel the moisture from his brow against her skin, as she rolled her hips against his. She couldn't imagine what his life had been; of the way life had passed through, and left the dark behind. Here there was only light, the tendrils of fire dancing against the stone, and the bright blue of his eyes as he looked into hers, her name burning on his lips.
"Richard!"
His heart jerked in his chest and he pushed himself up, the vagaries of sleep clinging around him as he struggled to orientate himself in the dark room. Mary was sitting up beside him; he could make out the sheets gathered in her hands in front of her chest, the outline of her face.
"I heard something," she said.
"I hadn't taken you for the hysterical type," he mumbled, propping himself up on his elbow. "The ghost of Mary Queen of Scots, was it?"
"Very funny," she replied, as he smothered a yawn.
"What was it?"
"I don't know. Scrabbling."
"My dear, you've spent your life in an grand country house. Surely you're used to odd noises. Now, really, I must go back to sleep."
"Aren't you going to investigate?"
"No."
"Richard!" she hissed.
"Oh, really, Mary, if you're that disturbed, investigate yourself."
He couldn't see but he could imagine the expression that accompanied her words: "Very well, I shall." She threw back the sheets so they landed over his face, and when he pushed them back he could make out her picking up her dressing gown and walking round the end of the bed.
Richard rubbed a hand over his eyes as she hesitated by the door, and with a theatrical groan, he called out: "Wait, let me. On the off chance that it's Jack the Ripper and not a rat." He plucked his dressing gown from the floor and tugged it on.
"I was wondering how long it would be before chivalry won out."
"And if it hadn't?" he asked, fumbling around on the bedside table for a box of matches to light the candle.
"Well, I would have looked myself." She gave a slight shrug as he struck the match and a burst of light shone across the lower half of his face.
"I think you just enjoy waking me up." He picked up the candle, and walked towards her. "If it's Mrs Ludlock I will be the one who screams."
"She is rather sinister, isn't she?" Mary swallowed, pulling her dressing gown more tightly around her, as he turned the key in the lock and opened the door into the black depths of the empty corridor. Richard held up the candle and swept an arc of light in front of them. It bounced from the rough stone and slightly threadbare carpet that ran down the centre of the corridor, and illuminated nothing untoward, so that he looked back at her with a satisfied smile, making to push the door shut again.
"I'd hardly call that a satisfactory investigation." One eyebrow raised, her arms crossed, she looked remarkably beautiful, a white outline.
Richard straightened. "Are you going to furnish me with a weapon to take on my quest?"
"I'd have thought your fists would do."
"There's nothing there. I think you just want to roam the corridors after lights out." He extended his hand to her. "Or are you afraid?"
"Richard, I'm in my nightgown."
"Of course you are. We can pretend we're part of a gothic novel. Have you read The Turn of the Screw?"
Mary raised her eyebrows. "Yes. Not the best parallel you have ever drawn, darling. Are you the ghost of a malevolent valet?"
He stepped over the threshold, his arm still out to her so that she took it with an amused sigh. "You like them with the spirit to be naughty?" he quoted.
"I think you've already corrupted me."
Richard enclosed her hand in his, pulling the door shut behind them, so they were contained in the candle's glow. "Let's see if I can remember my way around this place."
"You've done a lot of late-night corridor prowling, have you?" she asked, her fingers linked through his.
He turned to smile at her, and his palm tingled where it met hers. "I'll never prowl a corridor without you again."
They walked down the corridor and despite herself Mary gripped his hand tighter, an unseen draft fluttering through the light fabric of her dressing gown. The shadows bulged from the stone walls, an undulating flicker, each turn illuminated barely in time. Sometimes, as children, she and Edith had slipped out of the nursery at night, pushing and testing each other to see how easily they would turn tail and run back at the slightest sound. Mary always held out longest, in the velvet darkness, standing facing the wall in the blind ended corridor near the bachelor's rooms, counting in a whisper under her breath before chasing back after her sister, her nightgown catching on her feet. You are afraid, and I am not. Edith's eyes, bright and wide, as she sat cross-legged on the bed beside Mary's, her hands pressed to her lips. Mary's back would straighten, as she tossed her long dark hair over her shoulders, the conquering hero. The dark never frightened her, not like it did Edith, so really it wasn't such a victory.
"I think this is Mrs Ludlock's lair," Richard whispered, his lips brushing her ear. They turned into a narrow corridor, not wide enough to walk down two abreast. The door at the end was shut, a wooden crucifix nailed there.
"This corridor is like a tunnel," Mary replied.
"Perhaps it was," he said, holding up the candle to look behind them. "I think there was something in front of this entrance, or it was bricked in."
"Why?"
"For a secret mass?"
He reached past her, his forearm brushing her waist as he turned the handle and gave the wooden slatted door a push. "Richard, I don't think we should," she said, remaining in the entrance to what appeared to be a darkened cupboard. His hand dropped from the door and he guided her to one side, slipping through the gap first, the candle aloft in front of him. "A chapel," Mary breathed.
"Yes. A chapel." Richard sat down on one of the wooden benches, placing the candlestick holder down beside him and facing the small lectern. No more than ten people could possibly fit in the room, and Mary shivered to imagine the various members of the household pressed together, shoulder to shoulder, receiving a covert mass from a hounded priest. She sat down beside him, her hands clasped in her lap.
"It must have been rather frightening."
"What must?" he said, his gaze on the faded red curtain behind the lectern, just visible on the edge of the candle's glow.
"Being in here, the door closed, knowing what would happen if you were discovered."
"Yes, that must have been frightening."
"Richard?" She frowned, placing her hand over his. "What is it?"
"My father recited the Angelus, three times a day, every day, wherever he was." He didn't look at her. "Pray for us sinners." He paused, his eyes narrowing, as if trying to recall long forgotten words.
"Can we visit your father?" she asked.
"No, we can't."
"You haven't told me anything about him."
"Because I can't go back there." He took a deep breath, his fingers clenching beneath hers. "And he won't leave."
"Could we meet him somewhere else? Nearby? I assumed he couldn't travel." Mary pressed.
"I am not going to take you there, and I'd rather not discuss it any further."
The air thickened between them, and Mary reached to take his hand. He did not respond, his back straight, his shoulders still, and his face displaying nothing that she could even begin to discern. He seemed to move away, in the tiny dark room, walls slanting in towards them, the prayers of the hunted summoned to her mind. He had brought her here because it showed something of his past, the first step, the home of a benevolent mentor, but it was not the true beginning; it was not the raw unformed start of what had made him who he was. She wanted to see, to know, to try to understand, and she supposed, in a small uncertain way, she wanted to be shocked, to see a world so far from her own, to be able to stand by Richard with this knowledge in front of her family. A family who knew nothing, who saw nothing of the depths some people forced themselves from, the shackles broken, the mountains climbed. They sneered at the idea of a social climber and perhaps what they imagined was the plodding, sycophantic progress of a boy from a middle class drawing room to an office in the city, bowing and scraping to the titled and the great. That was not Richard, and she thought of him, fists raised once more, someone else's blood on his lips, and she wondered quite to what lengths he had gone to secure his rise.