GUERNSEY - Barnsdale Estate - It was after dinner, the day's light dying away. Marion had managed to skip the meal at-table, though it grieved her not to share the time with her father, in whose eyes she seemed again to be familiar. It had not been too difficult to hole up in her room and steal further welcome sleep, momentary oblivion.
She preferred to avoid Geis at all costs, his attentions and attempts at comfort and gentleness particularly unwelcome against her skin, about her person, at this time. He would not have gone unentertained, though. She assured herself that in her absence she could not have been too much missed, as Eleri in all her post-shopping delight had dressed for the meal.
Thankfully, Allen Dale had left for his work driving on Alderney, eliminating any further need to worry about him and his behavior toward her, or Fraulein Vaiser.
Up now from her rest, and out walking through the park in the fading light of evening, Marion thought of the new curfews in place, demanding Islanders not leave their homes after six o'clock p.m. until the morning. How the ridiculous stipulation extended even to moving about one's own property.
She found herself for a moment thinking of Sark, of La Salle's holding there. Wondering if such laws impeded its current occupants from making nighttime trips to the separate, free-standing lavatory. Well, perhaps such rules were not so much followed at La Salle's. But surely, how they must unfortunately curb and complicate the behavior and lives of other Islanders.
Here at Barnsdale, under Geis' oversight, she never feared being outdoors during sensible hours, knowing any soldiers that accompanied him on his visits were informed to allow her father and her as free a rein as possible.
The Nightwatch, of course, was another matter entirely. Far more difficult to explain being far afield of the house in the wee smalls if one were caught or sighted than simply being out on an evening walk to take in the sea breeze.
She made a note to ask Eva sometime how the Heindl family dealt with the Germans' strictures, and still managed trips to their also detached lavatory, and properly tending their few animals.
She had arrived at the horse barn, the building a good deal away from the far-newer carriage house (her mother's addition) with its agreeably appointed chauffeur's quarters on the second floor. The distance necessary, especially when it was first built and used, to keep the startling noises of automobiles well away from spooking the animals.
The chauffeur's quarters, now occupied by Geis' men. His 'guards', she knew he thought of them as. They were so young, she sometimes noticed; mere boys, still able to be awed at the size of the estate, the fact they were in uniform, allowed to wield their guns. Because they slept there beyond the house-proper, and took their meals in the kitchens around staff, she knew little of them, only occasionally learning one of their names.
When Geis was not present, their watching of the estate and tending to of their duties was generally quite lax, and during those times she rarely, if ever, felt their eyes watching her, or paying mind at all to anything that did not immediately concern them occurring on the estate. But it did pop into her head that with the new addition of Eleri the Kommandant might likely task more guards to Barnsdale. Either way, such young men, often lonely for companionship, would prove a future challenge (in the face of the irrepressible Eleri's occupancy) to surmount.
Marion entered the stone barn, her mind immediately more restful at the (to her) calming atmosphere of horses stabled for the night, shifting in their stalls as they prepared for rest. It was an old edifice, added onto several times over many decades, its roof still thatched as in the old way, making it a building more in harmony with the many simpler provincial structures of the island than the doughty English neo-Classical architecture that was Barnsdale house.
It brought to mind something of Mr. Thornton's nearby cottage just beyond the estate's edge, though she had not visited him there in many long months. His home always striking her as cozy and inviting, for all that it could have been no larger than several hundred square feet (less than the size of her mother's Barnsdale suite).
Marion found her way to their grey Percheron Dovecote, the gentlest of their mounts (Gypsum, as a rule, too high-strung for cuddling), always willing to have anyone, but particularly Marion, lay across her massive draft horse flank without protesting.
Marion lay her head there, feeling the horse's rise and fall of breath, smelling the comforting scent of horse and harness leather. She closed her eyes, her hand wishing it were nearer a currycomb, in the absence of such using the tips of her fingers to mimic that action, stroking back and again back in the same, soothing direction of horse's coat.
If she had thought her recently so-rattled bones might stand the strain, she would have mounted her bareback and gone for a ride. Anything to feel a moment of freedom, of release, however false.
Never much one for outright singing, she found herself humming softly, uncertain whether she did so more for Dovecote, or herself. It was a song Freddy had taught her, one he was fond of even when it was not Derby Day.
"Weep no more my ladies," she hummed, only thinking of the tune's accompanying words, "oh, weep no more today. We will sing one song for my old Kentucky home, for my old Kentucky home so far away."
What a melancholy chorus, its verse far brighter. Her mind wondered about Fred for a moment. Was he 'so far away' from that home of his, the horses and life he loved best? Certainly she didnt like to imagine him so. She refused. Unsuccessful riverboat gamblers did not sign up to go off to war. They were far too busy managing their own debts to take up arms against opponents any further away than the opposite side of a gaming table.
It was the distant sound of her father moving about on the stone promenade overlooking the park where he often smoked after dinner that brought her head up, opened her eyes from the stolen moment of peaceful contemplation.
Marion held back her own startled response when upon opening them she saw that she was not, in fact, alone, but that Geis was standing just beyond the stall's half-door, his eyes narrowed, intently watching her.
He was not much one for barns, as a rule. At home in the Schwarzwald the Gisbonnhoffer family were known for merchants, respected sellers of dry goods. And always more apt to use an auto, or delivery truck, when others less progress-minded might still board a horse and cart.
But he had seen Marion, from the distance at which he had shadowed her from the house, make her way here, and had followed.
Interestingly she had sought out the large and powerful horse-of-all-work in its stall, not the mare she usually chose when she rode. He watched on as she had softly, almost as though afraid of waking anyone, let herself into the stall.
She carried no treats for the horse that he could see, no gift to offer it. Presently she had lain down her head (her uninjured cheek) upon the horse's immense side and begun to pet it with the most tender of caresses. It was not long before he thought he caught something, even, of her humming to the animal as though meaning to comfort and soothe it.
His mind snagged on this oddity. The horse had not seemed distressed when Marion had sought it out, nor did it seem distressed now. It was, in point of fact, utterly placid. Docile to the point that it might, actually, be sleeping. So why the need to treat it so? To offer such special attentions, such kind, soft sounds and gentle touches. It was an animal - and one meant for a life of work, at that. What could it possibly understand of receiving such delicate care? Such loving attentions?
Why would she choose to waste these things on it so?
Sir Edward noised about on the house's raised stone promenade, and at the sound Marion had opened her eyes and spotted him just outside the stall she occupied with the horse.
"You did not come to dinner," Geis said in parentally reproachful salutation. "I trust you did eat something?"
She did not lift her cheek away from the side of the great beast. "I have not much been hungry."
"No." He meant to agree. "I mean, yes. I know. You ought to be resting." He could not withhold suspicion from his tone, always ready to believe a slight. "And yet you are here, as though you are avoiding the house. Avoiding me."
"You know the Kommandant ordered me to accompany his daughter - "
"Yes, of course." He tried to answer her bristly tone reasonably. "But I am able now to be at Barnsdale so little." He attempted a small flirt, accompanied by an eighth of a smile. "Can you fault me for wishing to spend every spare moment with you?"
"No. I cannot fault you for that."
His brow clouded. "Marion, what is it?"
Pulling away from the beast's flank, her words came out crisp but rushed, as though she must say them or suffer some internal punishment from holding them in. "I thought perhaps you were a better man. You are clearly not the man I thought you to be," she told him, her hands shaking as they dug into her pocket for the telegrams folded there. Under her breath she added, "not that I had set the bar so very high."
"How can you mean?" He stepped to the stall's closed half-door, his hand to the hasp's pin to open it and walk in. "In what way have I disappointed you?"
"In every way," she told him, beginning to read in her flawless home-tutored German the message from his wife, Greta. The final words she nearly spat, such was her effort to get them out. "I am glad to have lost my betrothal ring. I would have felt dishonest wearing it."
It actually took Geis a moment to place what he was hearing. At first he did not recognize the birthday message, as though it were meant for someone else. Then, the realization came crashing down that he had been found out. Before he could ask Marion in knee-jerk reaction where she had gotten hold of the document, she segued into reading aloud the eloquent reply to it he had required Diefortner to draft and send.
In a sort of frozen horror he watched her face as she seemed near tears, the contractions of muscles in her cheeks clearly causing pain from its pulling at her stitches.
"Marion," he fumbled with the stall door's fastener. "Marion," he cried out, trying to get to her, the panicky timbre of his voice upsetting the barn's equine residents.
"No," she said, something unusually defiant in her face now, something he had never seen before. "What was your plan? To trick me? To deceive me until it was too late?" She gestured with the crumpled papers of the telegrams. "Or simply, 'til death do we part'?"
He pleaded, not prepared for this moment, saying the first things that came to his mind. Whatever it would take to assure her of his feelings. "They are nothing to me, Marion," he tried to explain his family behind in the Fatherland. "Nothing. Nothing holds meaning without you."
"Nothing?" she gasped, her own tones milder than his in respect to the horses, her facial expression filling in where loud and abrupt tones prove disruptive. "Your own children," at this she shook, "and you say they mean nothing? And what of the child we would have had, Geis? What of your bastards got upon me? Would they also have been nothing to you?"
"No - I - did not mean it that way. I will pursue a divorce, certainly. I was already in the process," he lied, his family once seeming so far-off, as if they had existed only in a dream, now in this moment of his unmasking starkly real. "You will have me, then, yes? Your own parents, after all are..."
Like stomping her foot on an insect, she over-spoke his words. "Do not ever presume to think you know my feelings on the matter of my parents' relationship. And do not assume that I approve of what they have done, or that I would consider doing the same." Her boldness was so complete, her anger blossoming in a way he had never beheld. In a moment it turned into something equally distressing to him, deep sorrow and regret coming from her. "I would have married you, Geis. I would have vowed to keep myself only to you - before you, before whatever corrupt priest you had found to fake the ceremony - before God. And I would have done it!"
His chin went up as his eyes shot heavenward and then closed at her pronouncement. "Come out, Marion," he begged her leave the horse stall, "come out."
He felt shot through the heart, pinned to the wall like a butterfly specimen meant for display. He could feel how clearly she saw him, his actions. He could barely breathe at the intoxicating nature of what she had shared that she had meant to do, voicing the very wholehearted sincerity of commitment with which he had so hoped she might approach their wedding. Lost to him now. Made null, void by his own actions.
He knew how she must've gotten hold of the papers. Their entire 'discovery' smacked of Diefortner acting on orders of the Kommandant. Doubtless the ambitious adjutant had embellished the telegram reply he had been ordered to write to play further into the Kommandant's plot.
Almost certainly the Kommandant had acted the horrified, equally betrayed friend upon Marion sharing the news of what she had found.
"You lied to me," Marion told him, her eyes like two immoveable moonstones. "I had assumed your word was as good as truth, your promises to be trusted. You clearly thought my own honor, my own ability to truly choose, did not matter."
"Please," he begged her, "please." He had had no time to prepare a defense for his behavior.
"No, Geis," she told him, denial about her like an impenetrable cloak. "Everything is back in its box."
He noticed her fisted hand as she spoke, the crescent shapes of her nails forcefully pressing into the palm's flesh in her barely-caged fury. "You are a complete stranger to me. I have clearly never even known you to begin with."
The sound of Sir Edward coughing to clear his throat came to them on the breeze from off the promenade.
The sound of it bit into Marion's chest like bitterest chill. What was she doing? She had found she no longer cared what her actions, her outburst, might mean for her, but what might it mean for her father? His health? His very life?
"I accept your anger," Geis declared, seizing the moment wherein she had fallen silent. "I accept your viewing our engagement as broken. But please..." He knew he was begging. He was not a man used to begging. Not a man given to displays of acknowledging another ever had the upper hand, even when, as with the Kommandant, they did. Certainly such sniveling men did not advance in the ranks. He had spent his mature life creating an aura of sanguine competence, of to-be-perceived-as deserved pride. Yet he was prepared in that moment to do anything in order to win her back, to re-acquire anything of her favor.
He was a man deserted by the smug self-importance that had for the most part steered his adult life. He was made small in front of her, humiliated, but willingly. "...Can we not start again...as friends, at least? Will you not take my hand, accept my admission of guilt in keeping this from you?" Had she been able to see him behind the stall's half-door, where he still stood without, he might have gone to one knee. "Will you not understand that my feelings for you are such - have ever been such from the moment I met you that day that - "
She did not let him finish. Her expression still wore the remains of her outrage, but in her final words he scrabbled for, and found, hope, but also, for the moment, a dismissal.
"We will never find ourselves in this situation again." Marion walked to the half-door, from practice manipulating the hasp closure with one hand, and sidling out the stall's entrance (which he more than half-occupied), showing she held no fear (nor interest) in close physical contact with him. Without speaking further she walked away from him, out into the early night.
For the first time, he knew better than to follow her.
...TBC...