All at once, a wave of exhaustion hit me, and my every nerve felt oversensitive. He’d written those words in every hedgerow letter, but he’d never said them before.
“No good will come of people finding out,” I countered. No matter how he might try to share the responsibility, there was only one reputation on the line—mine. I had overstepped the boundaries of proprietary the moment I walked in the gardens at night with a man to whom I was not affianced. And I’d thoroughly and indisputably fallen when we’d stripped each other of our clothes and made love.
“I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” he promised, forehead against mine, arms around my waist.
“I know you will try.” That was all he could do. If his sister and her husband found out, I would be turned out of Highbury House.
Yet it wasn’t just this job that was at risk. I could lose everything. The annuity my father left was barely enough for Adam to live on, let alone me. I might think of myself as an artist, but I also worked because I had to. Now my brother and I both relied on my income.
It was easier for Matthew. Even with the hint of eccentricity that hung about him like perfume from one of his roses, he had options. He could marry or not. He could start a business or not. He could simply be.
“I wish that you would allow me to show you that you can trust me,” he said, as though he could read my thoughts.
“I don’t need to trust you,” I said.
He slipped his arms around me. “We all need trust, Venetia.”
I twisted, unable to watch him look at me with such open, earnest hope. Still, I let him coax another kiss out of me when he led me outside to my cart.
“You’ll write to me?” he asked. “I check our hedgerow every day.”
My cheeks flushed, and all I could do was nod before snapping the leads. But as my horse and cart bumped its way out of the courtyard, I couldn’t resist looking back at him, eyes fixed on me at the entry to his drive.
SATURDAY, 29 JUNE 1907
Highbury House
Hot
I lied to Matthew. I did not write to him this morning as I promised. I woke up intending to, but as soon as I donned my gardening apron and stepped out of my cottage door, I heard raised voices and braying. I hurried to the gate between Highbury House and the farm and found the usually unflappable Mr. Hillock in a dither. One of Adam’s orders must have been misread, because instead of four carts of gravel, nine donkey-drawn carts were neatly pulled up.
After sorting out the gravel debacle, an issue arose with the reflecting pool, and then Mr. Hillock’s son, Young John, and another of the gardeners, Timothy, flew at each other in an argument while bending canes for arches. （I gather that the disagreement had more to do with a young lady in the village than it did building garden arches.）
All in all, an exhausting day, and the reason why I couldn’t even put pen to paper to write in this diary yesterday evening. Instead, I’m stealing a few moments over the cup of tea and toast that the maid brings me each morning to write a few lines. Then, a letter to Matthew.
? STELLA ?
JUNE 1944
Stella should have been watching Bobby to make sure he wasn’t tearing things off the shelves of Mrs. Yarley’s shop, but all she could do was stare at the two suitcases on the shelf before her. They weren’t particularly beautiful, but she used to come in just to look at them and dream that one day they’d hold her belongings.
Even now, she wanted to pull one down and take it back to Highbury House, the case slapping against her leg as she walked the dusty, sunbaked road. She would throw it down on her bed and fill it to the brim with clothes and her magazine cuttings of all the places she wanted to travel and her coursework. Then she would take that case to the train station and leave.
She would leave everything behind. Warwickshire. Highbury House. The fights with Mrs. George. Men’s shouts filling the house in the dead of the night. The smell of antiseptic and clatter of the medicine cart too close to her kitchen for comfort.
But mostly, she would leave Bobby.
A low, deep guilt rolled through her.
Even before Mrs. Symonds had read the telegram out, Stella was certain what it would say. She knew the moment she saw Mr. Jeffries out on the veranda that the news was for her, but she’d hoped and prayed that the evening’s tragedy would be someone else’s.
When Mrs. Symonds read out the final “STOP,” Stella had fallen apart, at the loss of her sister, yes, but also at the death of the life she’d longed for. She would never leave Highbury. Never move to London and put to use any of her studies. Never see the places in her pictures.