Lord Frederick Ayres, the Tenth Viscount Kendall, has lived in Orton Hall since succeeding his uncle to the title in the 1940s. He served as an officer in the Eighth Army in World War II and saw action in North Africa.
Viscount Kendall has not been seen in public for some years and could not be reached for comment.
Her stomach drops.
There’s a photograph with the article. A young man in military uniform, handsome features blurred by time. But she can see him there – just – in the firm line of the jaw, the deep-set eyes. It is the same stooped, haunted man she met at the Hall.
Frederick is the viscount.
What kind of father would disinherit his children in favour of a man who had raped one of them? Surely he couldn’t have known. For a moment, Kate allows herself to consider a worse possibility: that Violet had told her father about the rape, and that he simply … hadn’t believed her.
Outside, an owl hoots mournfully. Kate feels a surge of sadness for her great-aunt, this woman she can barely remember. They’d had more in common than she realised.
She goes to the sink for a glass of water, gulping it down as if it can flush away her memories. She stays there for a moment, looking out at the snowy garden, flaming with sunset. Violet’s garden.
Despite everything that happened to her, her great-aunt had built an independent life for herself. She may have never married and had a family of her own, but she had her cottage, her garden. Her career.
Now Kate, too, has built her own life.
And she won’t let anyone take it away from her.
34
ALTHA
Grace and I stood looking at each other for a long time before she spoke. It was the first time she had looked at me directly in seven years. Since we were thirteen, I had only ever seen her from afar: in church, or shopping on market day. She had always passed her eyes over me as if I were not there.
‘Will you not invite me in?’ she asked.
‘Prithee, wait,’ I said, before shutting the door. Hurrying, I herded the goat into the garden, my mother’s warning ringing in my ears.
When this was done, I opened the door and moved aside to let Grace through. I noticed she walked slowly, as if she were a much older woman. She sat heavily at the table. She kept her cloak on, even though it was soaked from the gale outside.
‘Would you care for some food?’ I asked.
She nodded, so I cut a slice of bread for her, and some cheese, and sat down opposite her. As she ate, her cap shifted, and I saw a dark shadow on her cheek. I thought perhaps it was cast by the flicker of the candle on the table. Still she did not say anything until she finished eating.
‘I heard about your mother,’ she said. ‘Now we are both orphans.’
‘You have your father,’ I said.
‘My father’， she said, ‘hasn’t looked at me properly since I was thirteen years old, though I kept house for him and brought up my brothers and sisters until I left home.’
‘Well, you have your husband.’
She laughed. It was a dry sound, like the crackling of flames. She did not laugh like this before, when we were children, I remember thinking. She’d had a sweet laugh then, sweeter than the hymns we sang in church, sweeter even than birdsong.
‘You will have to tell me what it’s like, sometime,’ I said. ‘Being a wife.’
‘I haven’t come here for idle talk,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m here on business. To purchase something from you.’
One small white hand went to the pocket of her kirtle, and I heard the clink of coins.
‘Oh,’ I said. My face flushed, and a tide of pain rose in my throat. I had been stupid to think she had wanted things to be as they were before, after all these years. After everything that had happened.
‘I am with child,’ she said, turning her head away. Her voice was very quiet; her face hidden by the cap.
‘What joyful tidings,’ I said. I remembered how much she had spoken of wanting to grow up and have a babe of her own when we were children. When I was very young, I had told her, horrified, of Daniel Kirkby’s birth: his mother grunting and glistening all over with sweat, the child sliding out of her in a rush of slime and blood. Grace, who had seen her brothers and sisters born, laughed at my ignorance. ‘That is just the way of things,’ she had said. ‘You’ll learn yourself one day.’
There had been rumours of a pregnancy around the village in the months after she married, and when I saw her in church, I had noticed a swell beneath her dress, a plumpness to her face. But no child ever came. I did not know if she had lost the baby, or if there had never been one. Either way, she must be very happy now, I thought, to be so blessed.
She did not say anything for a moment. When she spoke again, I was sure I must have misheard her.
‘I need something’， she said slowly, as if she were reluctant for the words to leave her mouth, ‘that will make it go away.’
‘Go away? Morning sickness, you mean? I can see to that. I can make a tonic with balm, to settle the stomach—’
‘You misunderstand me,’ she said. ‘I meant the child. I need … I need something to make the child go away.’
Her words hung heavy in the air. Neither of us spoke for a moment. I heard the pop and hiss of the fire, the drum of rain on the roof. These sounds swelled in my ears, as if they could take away what she had said.
‘Has the baby quickened?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Grace,’ I said. ‘Are you quite sure? What you are asking of me … it is a sin. And a crime. If anyone were to discover it …’
‘It will die anyway.’ She said this as coolly as if she were commenting on the yield of the harvest or the turn of the weather. ‘You would be doing it a kindness.’
‘Grace,’ I said. ‘Even if I knew how …’
‘You must know,’ she said. ‘Your mother would have known. Look through her things. There’s certain to have been a village girl or two who came to her for help after some indiscretion or other. Besides …’ She paused. ‘She was good at taking life, wasn’t she?’
The memory of that terrible night swam before me. Anna, still and lifeless while Grace sobbed.
‘Grace. Your mother would have died anyway, had we not come. She was too ill by then … the fever was so strong. And the leeches …’
Her head turned sharply back towards me. In the candlelight, her eyes were bright – with tears or fury, I did not know.
‘I do not wish to speak of it,’ she said. ‘Just tell me if you can help me or not. If you ever loved me as your friend … then you will do this thing for me. And you will ask me no more questions.’
All the moisture had gone from my mouth. I felt giddy, as though the room had lurched to one side and taken me with it.
‘I will try,’ I said softly. ‘But I cannot promise that it will work.’
‘Aye, then. I will return in one week. Will that give you enough time?’
‘Yes.’
She rose from the table. ‘I must be going. I have left John asleep. He does not normally wake until dawn, after so much ale. But I cannot risk him rousing to see that I am gone.’
I myself slept a poor night after she left. I thought for a long time, wondering what I had agreed to. All for the love of someone who – and I knew in my heart that this was true – still blamed me for her mother’s death. Still hated me.