Page 43 of Atone, Adonis

It explained everything. It did not, however, make any of it simple.

“You must tell Thomas,” she said.

Her brother needed to know the truth. Although not even Julianna, who knew him so well, could say how he’d react. He’d been so strange these last few days.

“Not yet,” Fred said. “I don’t like to think of that night, let alone speak of it. Give me a little more time.”

Julianna nodded. Because in truth, she needed time to think and consider what Fred had told her too. He’d lied about the cause of her parents’ death for a decade, for ten entire years, and the truth now didn’t just wash that away, no matter how much either of them might want it to. After Robert there was nothing she hated so much as she hated a liar and now she was married to one.

Chapter

15

Sedgewick Manor

May 20th, 1860

Your Ladyship,

I trust this note finds you in better health than the weather here permits. Dorsetshire has been swallowed by snow, and we remain half-buried in drifts. The Earl and his new Countess are installed at last in the Manor, though truth be told, the house is scarcely fit for habitation. Only the master’s chamber and one guest room have yet been made serviceable.

It falls to me, of course, to ensure the sustenance of all under this roof, a task not made easier by Mr. Thomas Farrow’s arrival, in such a fragile state. His Lordship himself insisted Mr. Farrow be lodged in the best room, and the Countess, naturally, took the next. His Lordship is left to pass the night away in his study. The staff work diligently to ready the other rooms and feed the extra mouths, but we are few and the care of Mr. Farrow along with the storm have slowed our efforts considerably.

Do write when you plan to return to Dorsetshire. It has been an age since I last saw you here. I know well enough that our stations are too different now for calling and tea, but it would ease me to know you are in Dorset again, safe and well.

I remain,

Your most humble servant

Julianna woke before the sun did and for a moment she wasn’t entirely clear where she was. The ceiling above her was unfamiliar, too high and certainly too ornate, and the air smelled faintly of beeswax and polished silver. Then the last weeks of her life came back to her in a rush. She was at Sedgewick Manor, not Farrow Cottage. And she was married to Fred.

She lay very still and listened to the Manor around her. Somewhere a board creaked and the wind worried at the casements. A clock chimed the quarter hour. She wondered if Fred was awake.

She had not seen him since the previous evening when he’d excused himself from dinner to review estate business. She hadn’t realized that not only did Fred have Sedgewick Manor in Dorset and Chester House in London, there was also a hunting estate in Scotland near to his cousin the Duchess of Barclay, and the seat of the Earldom itself in Warwickshire. All those grand houses and all that land, and she suspected he’d slept in his study again, if he’d slept at all.

The only land she personally cared about was a quarter mile down the road at Farrow Cottage. She had not been back there since she’d arranged for the animals to be tended and packed up their few belongings to bring them to the Manor. It was far past time she made her way back to inspect the damage from the storm.

By the time the sun had finally risen, she’d breakfasted alone and dressed for the walk through the snow. She needed the solitude. Needed, she told herself, to see with her own eyes what the storm had done to the land.

It was not entirely true. She also needed space. She had too many feelings to be cooped up in the Manor. About Fred and his decade-long lie, about her brother and his strange turn in behavior, and especially about this new desire she felt growing inside her to have her own life. She felt guilty about it but she also felt it was vital to her well-being in a way that surprised her.

The walk was perfect. A moment alone to breathe with the sky a crystalline blue above her head. Farrow Cottage coming into view between all those snow-covered hedgerows. She pushed open the gate and felt an immediate sense of calm. This was hers—her land to walk, her home to inhabit—for now at least. She’d come to treasure this small plot of earth, and was glad to be back.

She walked the property, assessing. The snow had covered the garden beds and was half-way up the pea trellis. There would be no springtime pea shoots. But the hens were gossiping and the dairy cow showed every sign she’d been milked.

“Well,” she said quietly to her garden. “Easy enough to put you to rights.”

She exchanged her walking gloves for the hardier ones made for work and got started. She cleared branches for kindling and worked the beds free of snow, pressing loosened soil back into place, and all the while felt the earth soothe her. Here, at least, the rules were simple. Tend what grew, clear away what didn’t. Illness was obvious, rot could be cut away, and nothing twisted around her insides.

The cottage felt smaller than she remembered it though. The hearth was cold and dust had once again colonized every surface she’d once fought to keep clean. She moved from room to room in silence, trailing her fingertips over chair backs and table edges, stopping at the music box.

It sat exactly where she had left it on the mantel place and she picked it up. The painted lid was worn nearly smooth from her mother’s touch and then from her own. When she wound the key and opened it, the thin, wavering melody rose into the stillness.

She could see Thomas then as he had been when they were children, laughing and spinning her clumsily across the narrow kitchen while their mother protested. Fred leaning in the doorway, feigning indifference while tapping his boot in time.

How certain they had all been then that the world was theirs and that they’d love each other forever. She snapped the lid shut.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, just as she had once before while holding this box in her hands. But it was less clear now what she was sorry for. She tucked the music box into her reticule and left the cottage, feeling more grounded and more unmoored than when she’d arrived.