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This day was dry, but there was a hard, cutting wind whining a little in the bare branches above them. It was not a morning to dawdle in conversation as the horses walked sedately. It was definitely an occasion on which to move to the front of those getting ready, then take a brisk canter along the open stretch ahead. Had it been twice the length, they would both have chosen to urge their horses into a gallop.
They came back breathless but with their hearts pounding and the blood drumming in their ears. They gave their horses to the grooms and took the waiting carriage back to Beata’s home, not far away.
“Thank you, that was marvelous,” Beata said cheerfully as they took their riding boots off in the hall and went in stocking feet into the morning room, where the fire was burning nicely. A few minutes later one of the footmen brought slippers, including a pair for Miriam, and two silver-handled mugs and a jug of steaming hot chocolate.
“Do I have to pretend solemnity?” Beata asked with a smile as the footman closed the door behind him, leaving them alone.
Miriam smiled back. “I should be disappointed,” she admitted. “I was hoping you would feel something good—relief, exhilaration, at the very least—the chance to forget propriety and do as you wished.”
“I did,” Beata said frankly. She looked across at Miriam sitting comfortably a little sideways in the chair. She did not have the smooth perfection of youth anymore, but the laughter and the passion in her face would always capture the attention, and perhaps it would always disturb.
Memories came back to her of gold rush days…not just of the town or the bay with its jungle of ships of every kind, mostly abandoned by their crews who had left them, with all they could carry, to go to the goldfields.
The hot chocolate was finished but Beata had not bothered to ring the bell for anyone to take the tray away.
Miriam sat opposite her, her hands folded on her knees, not comfortable anymore. “Do you remember Walt Taylor? A big man but very gentle.”
Beata tried to recall, but nothing came to her: no face, no voice.
“I’m sorry,” Miriam said quickly. “I think that was before we really knew each other. Piers was still alive….” She tailed off as if the words had evaporated into the warm, fire-lit room but the name of Piers Astley drove out all other recollections and for a moment Beata saw her expression, the lost look.
“I’m sorry,” Miriam said again, leaning forward compulsively, gathering herself. “That was clumsy of me. Here you are mourning the death of your husband only a couple of weeks ago, and I am talking of twenty years in the past. But…something of the edge remains, the sudden cut where you thought it was all healed.” Indeed she looked as if the pain were raw inside her and time had done nothing to heal the wound. “I really am sorry, Beata. I did not mean to be so thoughtless.”
“Please don’t apologize.” Beata did not find it hard to say. “It was not sudden, like Piers’s death. Ingram was ill for over a year, and he was not a young man.”
“But you’re young,” Miriam said warmly.
Beata smiled with a quite natural ease. “Thank you, my dear. I admit that under the black weeds, I feel it. Most of the time, I look forward to the future.” That was only partly true. She also dreaded it. The hold of the past was very strong, as if Ingram’s last grip on her had not loosened with his death.
“Most of it? You have times of grief. It’s natural. I didn’t know Ingram, but you must have memories that linger, fill your mind with sorrow.”
Oh, yes! She could see Ingram’s face in her dreams. She could feel the touch of him, smell his skin as if he had only just let go of her.
Should she give Miriam the answer she expected? The hypocrisy of it almost suffocated her.
“Yes, I do,” she agreed. “You might have found Ingram interesting, but you would not have liked him.” Was that too much truth? She longed to be able to tell someone, to talk to Miriam as they had years ago, sharing young women’s secrets, as if they had been sisters.
Miriam stared at her, the beginning of understanding in her eyes. The softness of her expression almost evoked their old intimacy. Was it conceivable that Piers Astley had abused Miriam the way Ingram York had abused her? Was that the understanding in Miriam’s eyes?
She should change the subject, if she could—or take the chance to speak.
“It is a…relief.” She chose the word intentionally. It left her room to interpret it differently if she changed her mind and wished to retreat instead. She was afraid, on the brink of not being alone with her secret wrapped up inside her, eating away at her like a disease. Would Miriam have the faintest idea what she meant? Has she ever been possessed, owned but not loved?
“Was he in pain?” Miriam, too, was guarding her meaning.
“I have no idea,” Beata said more sharply than she had intended. Now that the possibility of real honesty was so close she was irritated at the hesitation in reaching it.
Miriam’s face clouded. The tenderness in her eyes was so deep it seemed to be her own pain she was feeling.
“What was he like? Really?” Her voice was no more than a whisper.
Now it was either the truth, or lie. Either way, it was irreversible. She was soul-weary of lies.
“For the first couple of years he was all right.” Beata chose her words with as much precision as she could. “Then little things changed. At first it was only the occasional roughness, a deliberate hurting at moments of intimacy. But they grew more frequent until it was every time.” She was going to say it all now. She did not look at Miriam’s face because she knew she would not stop. This was a test. If Miriam was disgusted, disbelieving, then Beata would know she could never risk telling Oliver.
“He began to exercise other tastes,” she continued. “Revolting thi
ngs that were humiliating, and terribly painful. I should have had the courage to stop him. I tried two or three times, but he hurt me more. Of course it was in places no one else would ever see. I couldn’t go to a specialist doctor, another man, and tell him my husband had done that to me.”
