The heat of the night was now my ally, for it kept me from wanting to move or wrap myself up. I could wait and wait, and while I did, my head cleared, my heart slowed and I was able to consider my position.
I had an unfaithful husband. In that, I was not unusual.
But I had an unfaithful husband who felt able to commit his infidelity in this very house, while I lay in my bed mere yards away.
What wife could bear such humiliation? Not this one.
And yet, what could I do? I could reproach him with it, but his reply would be that I had deprived him of his conjugal rights and thus had no grounds for complaint if he sought relief elsewhere. Many would agree with him and say that the blame lay with me. Perhaps it does.
Nonetheless, adultery is adultery, and a vow is a vow.
I heard their cries, his grunts, her cackling laugh. I
t pierced me deep, and I wondered if my child felt the pain of it through me, in his innocent sleep.
I stood in my place and held myself still until at last the door handle turned and a woman in a coarse white gown came out. I saw her plait dangle down her back as she turned to kiss my husband a fond goodnight.
Eliza.
I did not come out of my hiding place until the door was shut and my husband out of view. I followed Eliza, softly, barefoot, down the back stairs. I had thought she might go to the attic, but she descended instead to the kitchen and went out into the garden, just as I had intended before coming upon the adulterers.
The thought that she, too, needed to cool down, entered my head, enraging me beyond endurance.
‘Eliza.’ I spoke from the kitchen doorway, taking a grim pleasure in the little squawk of shock she uttered before turning to face me. ‘Does your own bed not suit you tonight?’
A look of blank surprise was superseded by a hateful smirk.
‘Why, no, ma’am,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It’s ever such a hot night and a body needs the cool air after all that sweating.’
‘You . . .’ I could barely speak. ‘Hussy,’ came eventually on to my tongue.
‘Oh, me, is it? Me that’s the hussy? When you’re the one what came into this house and turned his head away from me.’
‘What do you mean?’ I came down from the doorstep and let my soles feel the grave cool of the patio flags. It was helpful in its way, giving me a sense of being anchored to the ground. Before, I had had the strangest feeling of weightlessness, as if I might fly up into the sky like a balloon.
‘Me and David. We’ve been lovers a long time. Ever since I first came here as under-housemaid. He was still in mourning then, but I soon soothed him. Years, I’ve loved him. Years, I’ve lived in hope, or as much as I dared. I suppose I knew, deep down, that if he married again it wouldn’t be me. Some fine lady, some rich widow. And then . . .’ She choked on the words. ‘You! A bloody governess. A nobody, no better’n me.’
‘You . . . You’re jealous?’ All sorts of intrusive thoughts crowded into my head, precipitated by the expression of naked hatred on her face.
‘I’m wronged,’ she said. ‘And I’m robbed. Robbed of what’s mine by right.’
‘You mean Lord Harville? Oh, then the girls . . .?’ I said, hideous light dawning.
‘Poor mites,’ said Eliza with a bitter laugh. ‘They ain’t done nothing to deserve what they’ve got in life. Let me show you something.’
‘Show me what?’
‘Wait.’
She went over to the round iron cover that concealed the entrance to the wine cellar and performed some kind of manoeuvre to open it.
‘I’ll show you something that’ll make you see,’ she said.
‘What can you show me? I already see,’ I said. ‘I see that you are the one responsible for all those horrible tricks, and you intend to steal my husband from me once again. But it will not work. I can give him a son, born in wedlock, and that is his heart’s desire, far more than to bed some servant girl whenever he wants.’
With a suppressed cry of fury, she rushed at me and knocked me to the ground, where we struggled desperately, hand against hand, with much scratching and biting and pulling of hair. I got free of her and rose again to my feet, but she launched herself once more, and her arms and legs flailed at me with such murderous intent that I feared for my life.
I cannot recall exactly how it came to pass, but somewhere in the milling chaos of fingernails and teeth, I pushed her off me with the last vestiges of my strength.