Page 17 of The Widower Without a Will
Martha asked a question that risked making her sound of the opposite view as him: “Why do we spend so much of our resources on chasing down slave traders of other nations?Wouldn’t it be better to spend that energy abolishing slavery completely throughout the empire?”
A week ago, when she had first arrived at Northfield Hall, she would have kept the question in for fear of revealing her ignorance.But that was before they were friends.She knew Lord Preston would not hold her question against her, as Kenneth might have done, to remind her in a month or three that she had wondered such a thing.For Lord Preston, asking the question was far better than remaining in silence, pretending she understood.
“If only humans were guided by doing the good rather than the bad, then we could do that.Or rather, we wouldn’t need to.Unfortunately, when we first abolished the slave trade, many British slavers started outfitting themselves as Americans or Spaniards to continue their business, not to mention all the establishments in Liverpool and Bristol that supply the slave trade who continue to participate in the shadows.If we do not make it impossible foreveryone,then no one will quit the trade.”
He accompanied the reply with a patient gaze, like a teacher gauging whether his pupil followed along.
Martha was distracted by those eyes—and how near he was on the opposite bench of the carriage, much closer than he ordinarily was across a table from her!Her heart was beginning to leap at each jostle of the carriage, few though they were, in hopes that his legs would knock against hers.
She tried to pin her thoughts to the topic at hand.“Do you think we shall ever succeed in abolishing slavery, even if we must continue languishing in the fight against the slave trade?”
On a sigh, Lord Preston looked out the window.“I have been fighting to abolish slavery since I came back to England in 1787.I thought it would have been long done by now.Still, I must believe it will be done.We must always keep fighting for what we know to be right, even when it seems impossible.”
Martha imagined him saying such a thing in a London drawing room, surrounded by women who regularly rode in coaches like his, and how those ladies must covet him.
Why had he never remarried?
And what did he think of someone like her, who was too busy holding her own little life together to fight for anything larger?
When the carriage arrived at the rectory, which sat on a nice acreage a half mile off Chapel Street, dread settled around Martha like a winter cape.Lord Preston handed her down to the yard which used to be her yard.Boyle knocked on the door that used to be her door.
She had never loved this home, which felt more like a tomb where she and Kenneth awaited their final judgment.It had not been the place of casual visits, like the ones she received daily in Tolpuddle, nor did it hold happy memories to carry her back to better times.Yet returning to this rectory reminded her that she still did not have a home to replace it—and she might never have a house to callhersagain.
Would she ever grow accustomed to how life could crumble from its foundations in an instant?
A housemaid—one whom Martha didn’t recognize from Thatcham—answered the door.She blushed ferociously at the sight of the liveried coachman and carriage.“M-m-may I help you?”
“Lord Preston and Mrs.Bellamy for Mr.and Mrs.Sebright,” Boyle intoned as imperiously as if they were calling upon a duke.
Martha wanted to object that all this pomp was unnecessary.But the farce had already begun, and it was too late to close the curtains.
“Won’t you come in?”the housemaid said, ducking out of the doorway.“Oh, I shall see if they are at home to visitors.”
Her accent was a lovely lilt, probably from the Irish community in Bristol, from whence the Sebrights had relocated.Martha busied her mind thinking about that instead of noticing they had moved her furniture around in the drawing room so that now the old chairs sat in corners while the settee hogged the space directly in front of the hearth.
Lord Preston did not sit, so neither did she.He withdrew the bill of dilapidations from his coat and lifted it to the light of the window to review it one more time.
Martha half wished she had never shown it to him.No, she couldn’t pay it—but could she bear to have Lord Preston in this house, taking up a fight that wasn’t his, simply because she was a weak woman who had not managed life properly?
Perhaps last week she would have welcomed his help, but now that she knew him—now that she craved his esteem—Martha wished he did not have so close a view of the true her.
Mr.and Mrs.Sebright rushed a little breathlessly into the room.When Martha had met them a week ago, they had been dressed in traveling costumes that had struck her as unnecessarily grand, and now Mrs.Sebright came in wearing a fine muslin day gown that could not possibly bear up to any kind of housework.
They did not truly rely on the living of the rectory, then—or they were willing to go into debt to swan about like a lord and lady.
Mr.Sebright bowed in greeting.“Lord Preston, I do apologize for keeping you waiting.We did not know to expect you.How honored we are to welcome you to our home.”Belatedly, he nodded to her.“Ah, I’m afraid Betsy neglected to tell us about your companion.”
Martha was so astonished that he didn’t recognize her that she forgot her manners and could only gape at the man.
Lord Preston said, “I believe you had the pleasure of meeting Mrs.Bellamy when you arrived in Thatcham.”
“Mrs.Bellamy, of course!”crooned Mrs.Sebright, diving forward to take Martha’s hand as if they were the best of friends.“Please, sit, and we shall ring for tea.”
The whole thing was too disorienting.Martha sat on the settee because someone put her there; she answered questions about the weather because she did not need a brain to do so; she pretended she was not there about the bill of dilapidations because they were pretending they had never sent it.
Across the hearth, on a sofa that had never belonged to Martha, Lord Preston seemed to be pretending, too.He even let them go through the trouble of presenting a tea set imported from China before saying, “No tea for me, thank you.I do not consume anything imported from beyond the isle of England.”
Mrs.Sebright’s cheeks flamed—as they should, since Martha had known that about the Preston family even when she lived in Tolpuddle.
