Page 62 of The Proposition
Well, shattered into an even finer dust than the pulverized mess her heart had become.
“Nora,” she whispered, leaning against her sister. “I am not well.”
“Of course, dearest, we’ll leave at once.”
The colder air outside proved a blessing, but it offered only temporary relief. Clemency opened her eyes wide enough to realize they were lifting her into Tansy’s family carriage, and Nora was stepping in behind her. When the door closed, the muted warmth and silence became instantly unbearable. She cried. Great, shivery, and sucking sobs that sounded more like someone dying from the cold than someone suffering their heart-death.
“What is the matter? Oh, Clemency, you are so pale!” Honora clung to her, held her. “What has happened?”
“I—I—cannot—say….” She could hardly get the words out between sobs.
“But you must tell me. You have me so horribly worried.”
Then Honora would have to remain worried. Her concern could not be addressed, for Clemency knew her sister well and felt sure that Honora would throw herself on the deadly sword of London gossip if it meant freeing her sister from Boyle’s clutches. But she refused to hurt Nora that way, to tear her away from Mrs. Chilvers, and give Delphine’s child to Boyle.
The future joy and contentment of two women had to take precedence over her immediate unhappiness.
She sobbed harder.
“Has something transpired between you and Mr. Ferrand?” Nora pressed. Clemency felt numb all over, and though the carriage rocked fiercely, she barely noticed. “I hardly caught sight of him before you collapsed. Oh, tell me what is the matter! You must!”
Inadvertently Nora had given her the words she needed. Putting them in the right order and speaking them coherently required every sinew of concentration. Her voice shook, butshe managed to whisper, “Yes. Something transpired. Whatever understanding was between us is…”Say it and have done. It’s gone. Say the word, say the hardest word in the English language.“Gone.”
Honora fell abruptly silent, her hands stilling on Clemency’s shoulder and side. For a moment, there was nothing but the strike of hooves over cobbles, the creaking of the carriage door, and the call of the driver as they raced back to the Bagshots’ home.
Softly, as if any sound at all might undo Clemency completely, Honora murmured, “And…And Boyle? What is to become of you two? Dare I ask, sweet sister?”
Clemency curled in on herself and indulged in one more rattling cry. Her face felt fit to burn, covered in a sluice of hot tears. How could it be said at all? And if spoken aloud now, in confidence with someone she loved and trusted, how much truer and more final did it make this lifelong sentence?
Tell her the truth. Do not suffer alone.
But what was braver? Taking this bullet to the heart spared two others. The mathematics were obvious. When it was finalized, Clemency told herself, she must never consider herself a martyr. This was her mistake, her doing; she could blame nobody for the curse of Turner Boyle but herself. She had been the one to believe his lies, to listen to his promises over the wise, sober words of Olympe de Gouges, of Mary Wollstonecraft. Of Bethany Taylor.
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men, wrote Wollstonecraft. And oh how Clemency felt that acutely now. None of this pain or torment would have come had she held fast to her beliefs and simply avoided both Boyle and Audric.
She would not forget again.
“It appears…” Clemency whispered, becoming strange and vacant. The pain was unbelievable, and she wondered if the absence of that pain would somehow sting too. A remembrance of a remembrance of what might have been for her and Mr. Ferrand.
Audric, forgive me.
“It appears that where Turner Boyle is concerned I remain…entangled. Mrs. Chilvers will not have her secret exposed after all.”
She wondered if Honora understood every way in which Clemency meant that. The carriage was quiet again. Clemency imagined a house, vibrant, full of life. A family lived there, but one by one they left and took their belongings. Then men came and put all their possessions into crates, and covered the sofas and tables with silky white sheets. The house gradually became empty and dark, no candles burning in the windows, and no laughter heard in the halls. Love left it as the dust settled, until all the tears cried and kisses exchanged and hands held were not just a distant memory but ghostly and distorted.
Love a haunt, and her the hollow, darkening house.
—
When Audric’s fourth letter went unanswered and unacknowledged, he knew it was time to believe a once impossible notion: that Clemency Fry had chosen another, and she had chosen his sworn enemy.
He watched the priceless vase sail across the room and smash into the far wall with a vague, detached pleasure. The sound ought to have resonated deep in his chest and releasedthe hot knot of agony coiled there. Yet he craved to throw more. He found an empty brandy bottle in reach and hurled that too. A powder of glass shimmered like ice under the sitting room window, the accrued detritus of his confusion and his rage.
The bottle shattering against the wall covered the sound of the door opening behind him. His man Ralston cleared his throat and kept his voice to a respectful murmur.
“Sir, your sister is becoming rather concerned.”
Delphine. God. How would he ever make sense of this for himself, let alone poor Delphine? They might have been a little family, strange in their way but content.
