Intolerable Civility

Chapter Five: Gin and Hemlock

The wind whipped in from the sea as David slammed the front door behind him. The force helped release some of his fury, but he still felt sick with anger. He set off at a brisk pace down the drive, hands in his pockets, shoulders bowed against the weight of the world. What had the woman been thinking, offering herself up to him like he was an obligation and she a prize? He kicked at a lump of gravel and swore. And she had been damp from her bath, golden hair loose across her pale shoulders, rose-scented water seeping into the thin fabric of her nightgown, her shadowed, fragile gaze begging protection. She was a ruined beauty now, too thin, too pale, too tired to be pretty. He had not expected how ill she would look when he came to her cottage. It had shocked him. She had wilted and faded like a cut rose. Yet he was no less under her power for that. Lust had uncoiled in his belly when she sat patiently on his bed. Anger had risen with it, as sickly a combination as gin and hemlock.

His stride lengthened as he reached the road. Under the moonless sky, the world was nothing but shadows upon shadows and the faint flickering lights of houses in the distance. His feet, however, remembered the ground from his boyhood days, running wild over these hills with Paul, hunting rabbits, fishing, building fires, and then, inevitably, getting turned off by their uncle's gamekeeper.

They were lucky Uncle Lewis never brought them up before the magistrate. He was spiteful enough to have done so, even if they were family, but too lazy.

David headed up the hill towards the cliffs, keeping well back from their edge. The sea stretched out black and treacherous to the horizon. He breathed in the salt air like a tonic. Long walks always relieved him of poisonous feelings, though in London, they never had the same regenerative effect as in the wilds of Wales. London crowded him. The sky was narrower there. You could never see it but hemmed in by rows of houses. Even Hyde Park felt constrained. The city hummed at its borders like sheets tucked too tight on an otherwise comfortable bed.

Why had he brought Catherine here? David swore out loud, the sound snatched away on the wind. He should have sent her anywhere else. Taken a cottage in some quiet spa town, made her comfortable, arranged her allowance, and then left her behind.

But that would be abandoning her. When he had seen the desolate cottage she lived in, its absolute isolation from all company but her baby, her cold companion, and her two servants, he had felt a stirring of anger on her behalf. It was cruelty to send her there, a prisoner in all but name. She needed people around her, and the people he trusted most were his family. They would look after her. They would give her what he could not bear to.

He would leave for London as soon as he could. He would learn to tolerate the narrow sky. Others did.

Without him being aware of it, his feet had taken him to the edge of a strip of dark, stunted woods between the village and Plas Bryn. A light burned in the window of a house at the edge of the woods. Baxter was still awake.

David headed for the house and — stopping himself from reaching for the iron knocker — tapped on the lit window instead. Through the glass he could see a cheerful kitchen parlour with a fire burning in the grate and a woman and a man sitting before it. The man got to his feet when he heard the tap and limped heavily, squinting, towards the window. Then he shook his head, laughed, and limped for the front door.

David came around as it opened.

"You're back." The man clapped David on the shoulder. "You married her then?"

"I did." David came at his beckoning through the passage and into the parlour. "Good evening, Mrs Baxter."

"Good morning is closer," the woman said wearily. "Baby's just fallen asleep. Don't you dare wake her."