Sighing, she reached down and removed one of her shoes, a sturdy black leather affair that laced up to the ankle. “It’s the only way to keep him quiet,” she said dourly.
Immediately, the ferret’s chatter ceased, and he buried his head inside the shoe.
Suppressing a grin, Amelia turned her attention to Poppy. “Did you have a row with Harry?” she asked gently.
“Not really. Well, it began as one, but—” Poppy felt a wash of heat over her face. “Ever since the wedding we’ve done nothing more than circle around each other. And then last evening it seemed that we would finally—” The words seemed to bottle up in her throat, and she had to force them out in a jumble. “I’m so afraid it will always be this way, this push and pull . . . I think he cares for me, but he doesn’t want me to care for him. It’s as if he both wants and fears affection. And that leaves me in an impossible position.” She let out a shaky, mirthless laugh and looked at her sister with a helpless grimace, as if to ask what can be done with such a man?
Instead of replying, Amelia turned her gaze to Miss Marks.
The companion appeared vulnerable, uneasy, turmoil churning beneath the veneer of composure. “Poppy. I may be able to shed some light on the situation. On what makes Harry so unreachable.”
Startled by the familiar way she had referred to Harry, Poppy stared at her without blinking. “You have some knowledge of my husband, Miss Marks?”
“Please call me Catherine. I would like very much for you to consider me as a friend.” The fair-haired woman drew in a tense breath. “I was acquainted with him in the past.”
“What?” Poppy asked faintly.
“I should have told you before. I’m sorry. It’s not something I can speak of easily.”
Poppy was silent with amazement. It wasn’t often that someone she had known for a long time was suddenly revealed in a new and surprising way. A connection between Miss Marks and Harry? That was profoundly unnerving, especially since both of them had kept it secret. She suffered a chill of confusion as an awful thought occurred to her. “Oh, God. Were you and Harry—”
“No. Nothing like that. But it’s a complicated story, and I’m not certain how to . . . well, let me start by telling you what I know about Harry.”
Poppy responded with a dazed nod.
“Harry’s father, Arthur Rutledge, was an exceptionally ambitious man,” Catherine said. “He built a hotel in Buffalo, New York, around the time they had started to expand the port and the harbor. And he made a moderate success of it, although he was by all accounts a poor manager—proud and obstinate and domineering. Arthur didn’t marry until he was in his forties. He chose a local beauty, Nicolette, known for her high spirits and charm. She was less than half his age, and they had little in common. I don’t know if Nicolette married him solely for his money, or if there was affection between them at the beginning. Unfortunately, Harry was born a bit too early on in the marriage—there was a great deal of speculation as to whether or not Arthur was the father. I think the rumors helped to bring about an estrangement. Whatever the cause, the marriage turned bitter. After Harry’s birth, Nicolette was indiscreet in her affairs, until finally she ran away to England with one of her lovers. Harry was four years old at the time.”
Her expression turned pensive. She was so deep in thought, in fact, that she didn’t appear to notice that the ferret had crawled into her lap. “Harry’s parents had taken little enough notice of him before. After Nicolette left, however, he was utterly neglected. Worse than neglected—he was deliberately isolated. Arthur put him in a kind of invisible prison. The hotel staff was instructed to have as little to do with the boy as possible. He was often locked alone in his room. Even when he took his meals in the kitchen, the employees were afraid to talk to him, for fear of reprisal. Arthur had made certain that Harry was given food, clothing, and education. No one could say Harry was being maltreated, you see, because he wasn’t beaten or starved. But there are ways to break someone’s spirit other than physical punishment.”
“But why?” Poppy asked with difficulty, trying to absorb the idea of it, a child being brought up in such a cruel manner. “Was the father so vindictive that he could blame a child for his mother’s actions?”
“Harry was a reminder of past humiliation and disappointment. And in all likelihood, Harry isn’t even Arthur’s son.”
“That’s no excuse,” Poppy burst out. “I wish . . . oh, someone should have helped him.”
“Many of the hotel staff felt terrible guilt over what was being done to Harry. The housekeeper, in particular. At one point she noticed that she hadn’t seen the child in two days, and she went looking for him. He had been locked in his room with no food . . . Arthur had been so busy, he had forgotten to let him out. And Harry was only five.”
“No one had heard him crying? Hadn’t he made any noise?” Poppy asked unsteadily.
Catherine looked down at the ferret, stroking him compulsively. “The cardinal rule of the hotel was never to bother the guests. It had been drilled into him since birth. So he waited quietly, hoping someone would remember him, and come for him.”
“Oh, no,” Poppy whispered.
“The housekeeper was so horrified,” Catherine continued, “that she managed to find out where Nicolette had gone, and she wrote letters describing the situation in the hopes that they might send for him. Anything, even living with a mother like Nicolette, would be better than the terrible isolation that was imposed on Harry.”
“But Nicolette never sent for him?”
“Not until much later, when it was too late for Harry. Too late for everyone, as it turned out. Nicolette took ill with a wasting disease. It was a long, slow decline, but when the end approached, it progressed quickly. She wanted to see what had become of her son before she died, and so she wrote asking him to come. He left for London on the next available ship. He was an adult by then, twenty years of age or so. I don’t know what his motives for seeing his mother were. No doubt he had many questions. I suspect there was always an uncertainty in his mind, as to whether she had left because of him.” She paused, momentarily preoccupied with her own thoughts. “Most often, children blame themselves for how they are treated.”
“But it wasn’t his fault,” Poppy exclaimed, her heart wrenched with compassion. “He was only a little boy. No child deserves to be abandoned.”
“I doubt anyone has ever said as much to Harry,” Catherine said. “He won’t discuss it.”
“What did his mother say when he found her?”
Catherine looked away for a moment, seeming unable to speak. She stared at the curled-up ferret in her lap, stroking his sleek fur. Eventually she managed to reply in a strained voice, her gaze still averted. “She died the day before he reached London.” Her fingers twined into a tight basket. “Forever eluding him. I suppose to Harry, any hope of finding answers, any hope of affection, died along with her.”
The three women were silent.
Poppy was overwhelmed.
What would it do to a child, to be raised in such a barren and loveless environment? It must have seemed as if the world itself had betrayed him. What a cruel burden to carry.
I will never love you, she had told him on their wedding day. And his reply . . .
I’ve never wanted to be loved. And God knows no one’s done it yet.
Poppy closed her eyes sickly. This was not a problem to be solved in a conversation, or in a day, or even a year. This was a wound to the soul.
“I wanted to tell you before,” she heard Catherine say. “But I was afraid it might have inclined you more strongly in Harry’s favor. You’ve always been so easily moved to compassion. And the truth is, Harry won’t ever want your sympathy, and probably not your love. I don’t think it likely that he can become the kind of husband you deserve.”
Poppy looked at her through tear-hazed eyes. “Then why are you telling me this?”
“Because even though I’ve always believed that Harry is incapable of love, I’m not entirely sure. I’ve never been sure about anything regarding Harry.”
“Miss Marks—” Poppy began, and checked herself. “Catherine. What is the association between you and he? How is it that you know all this about him?”
A curious series of expressions crossed Catherine’s face . . . anxiety, sorrow, pleading. She began to tremble visibly, until the ferret in her lap awoke and hiccupped.
As the silence drew out, Poppy threw a questioning glance at Amelia, who gave her a subtle nod as if to say, Be patient.
Catherine removed her spectacles and polished the perspiration-misted edges of the lenses. Her entire face had gone damp with nervousness, the fine skin gleaming with the luster of a pearl. “A few years after Nicolette came to England with her paramour,” she said, “she had another child. A daughter.”
Poppy was left to make the connection on her own. She found herself pressing her knuckles gently against her mouth. “You?” she eventually managed to get out.
Catherine lifted her face, the spectacles still in her hand. A poetic, fine-boned face, but there was something direct and decisive in the lovely symmetry of her features. Yes, there was something of Harry in that face. And a quality in her reserve that spoke of deep-trammeled emotions.
“Why have you never mentioned it?” Poppy asked, bewildered. “Why hasn’t my husband? Why is your existence a secret?”
“It’s for my protection. I took a new name. No one can ever know why.”
There was much more Poppy wanted to ask, but it seemed Catherine Marks had reached the limits of her tolerance. Murmuring another apology beneath her breath, and another, she stood and set the sleepy ferret onto the rug. Snatching up her discarded shoe, she left the room. Dodger shook himself awake and followed her instantly.
Left alone with her sister, Poppy contemplated the little pile of tarts on the nearby table. A long silence passed.
“Tea?” she heard Amelia ask.
Poppy responded with a distracted nod.
After the tea was poured, they both reached for tarts, using their fingers to cradle the heavy strips of pastry, biting carefully. Tart lemon, sugar syrup, the pie crust velvety and crumbly. It was one of the tastes of their childhood. Poppy washed it down with a sip of hot milky tea.
“Things that remind me of our parents,” Poppy said absently, “and that lovely cottage in Primrose Place . . . they always make me feel better. Like eating these tarts. And flower-print curtains. And reading Aesop’s fables.”
“The smell of Apothecary’s Roses,” Amelia reminisced. “Watching the rain fall from the thatched eaves. And remember when Leo caught fireflies in jars, and we tried to use them as candlelight for supper?”
Poppy smiled. “I remember never being able to find the cake pan, because Beatrix was forever making it into a bed for her pets.”
Amelia gave an unladylike snort of laughter. “What about the time one of the chickens was so frightened by the neighbor’s dog, it lost all its feathers? And Bea got Mother to knit a little sweater for it.”
Poppy spluttered in her tea. “I was mortified. Everyone in the village came to see our bald chicken strutting around in a sweater.”
“As far as I know,” Amelia said with a grin, “Leo’s never eaten poultry since. He says he can’t have something for dinner if there’s a chance it once wore clothes.”
Poppy sighed. “I never realized how wonderful our childhood was. I wanted us to be ordinary, so people wouldn’t refer to us as ‘those peculiar Hathaways.” She licked a tacky spot of syrup from a fingertip, and glanced ruefully at Amelia. “We’re never going to be ordinary, are we?”
“No, dear. Although, I must confess, I’ve never fully understood your desire for an ordinary life. To me, the word implies dullness.”
“To me, it means safety. Knowing what to expect. There have been so many terrible surprises for us, Amelia . . . Mother and Father dying, and the scarlet fever, and the house burning . . .”
“And you believe you would have been safe with Mr. Bayning?” Amelia asked gently.
“I thought so.” Poppy shook her head in bemusement. “I was so certain that I would be content with him. But in retrospect, I can’t help thinking . . . Michael didn’t fight for me, did he? Harry said something to him on the morning of our wedding, right in front of me . . . ‘She was yours, if you’d wanted her, but I wanted her more.’ And even though I hated what Harry had done . . . part of me liked it that Harry didn’t think of me as being beneath him.”
Drawing her feet up onto the settee, Amelia regarded her with fond concern. “I suppose you know already that the family can’t let you go back with Harry until we’re satisfied that he will be kind to you.”
“But he has been,” Poppy said. And she told Amelia about the day when she had sprained her ankle, and Harry had taken care of her. “He was thoughtful and gentle and . . . well, loving. And if that was a glimpse of who Harry really is, I . . .” She stopped and traced the edge of her teacup, staring intently into the empty bowl of it. “Leo said something to me on the way here, that I had to decide whether or not to forgive Harry for the way our marriage started. I think I must, Amelia. For my own sake as well as Harry’s.”
“To err is human,” Amelia said, “to forgive, absolutely galling. But yes, I think it’s a good idea.”
“The problem is, that Harry—the one who took care of me that day—doesn’t surface nearly often enough. He keeps himself ridiculously busy, and he meddles with everyone and everything in that blasted hotel to avoid having to think about anything personal. If I could get him away from the Rutledge, to some quiet, peaceful place, and just . . .”
“Keep him in bed for a week?” Amelia suggested, her eyes twinkling.
Glancing at her sister in surprise, Poppy flushed and tried to stifle a laugh.
“It might do wonders for your marriage,” Amelia continued. “It’s lovely to talk to your husband after you’ve been to bed together. They just lie there feeling grateful and say yes to everything.”
“I wonder if I could convince Harry to stay here with me for a few days,” Poppy mused. “Is the gamekeeper’s cottage in the woods still empty?”
“Yes, but the caretaker’s house is much nicer, and at a more convenient distance from the house.”