Darwinia

She had a clue before the morning’s work was finished. Alice went to the counter to serve a customer and came back to the storeroom wearing the pinched look that meant she had something unpleasant to say. She narrowed her eyes on Caroline, while Caroline tried not to flinch.

“It’s bad enough to grieve,” Alice said grimly, “when you don’t know for a fact that he’s dead. But it’s worse, Caroline — far, far worse — to finish grieving.”

And Caroline thought, She knows.

Not that it mattered.

That evening, Jered and Alice took themselves to the Crown and Reed, the local pub. When she was certain they were gone, Caroline escorted Lily downstairs and briefly into the cold street, to a neighbor, a Mrs. de Koenig, who charged a Canadian dollar to look after the girl and keep quiet about it. Caroline told Lily good-bye, then buttoned her own jacket and hood against the winter chill.

Stars shivered above the frozen cobbles. Gas lamps cast a wan light across crusts of snow. Caroline hurried into the wind, fighting a surge of guilt. Contagion from her aunt, she thought, this feeling of wickedness. She was not doing anything wicked. She couldn’t be. Guilford was dead. Her husband was dead. She had no husband.

Colin Watson stood waiting at the corner of Market and Thames. He embraced her briefly, then hailed a cab. He smiled as he helped her up, the smile a jejune thing half-hidden by his ridiculous moustache. Caroline supposed he was suppressing his natural melancholy for her. His hands were large and strong.

Where would he take her tonight? For a drink, she thought (though not at the Crown and Reed). A talk. That was all. He needed to talk. He was thinking of resigning his commission. He’d been offered a civilian job at the docks. He hadn’t lived in Jered’s storeroom since last September; he had taken a room at the Empire and was alone most nights.

That made things easier — a room of his own.

She couldn’t stay with him as long as she would have liked. Jered and Alice mustn’t know what she was doing. Or, if they knew, there must be at least a certain doubt, a gap of uncertainty she could defend.

But she wanted to stay. Colin was kind to her, a sort of kindness Guilford had never understood. Colin accepted her silences and didn’t try to pry them open, as Guilford had. Guilford had always believed her moods reflected some failure of his own. He was solicitous — thoughtful, certainly, after his own lights — but she would have liked to weep occasionally without triggering an apology.

Lieutenant Watson, tall and sturdy but with moods of his own, allowed Caroline the privacy of her grief. Perhaps, she thought, it was how a gentleman treated a widow. The upheaval of the world had cracked the foundations of civility, but some men were still gentle. Some still asked before they touched. Colin was gentle. She liked his eyes best of all. They watched her attentively even as his hands roamed freely; they understood; ultimately, they forgave. It seemed to Caroline there was no sin in the world those quiet blue eyes couldn’t redeem.

She stayed too late and drank more than she should have. They made scalding, desperate love. Her Lieutenant put her in a cab, when she insisted, an hour later than she had planned, but she made the cabbie let her off a block before Market. She didn’t want to be seen climbing out of a hansom at this hour. Somehow, obscurely, it implied vice. So she walked off-balance into the teeth of the wind before reclaiming Lily from Mrs. de Koenig, who wheedled another dollar from her.

Jered and Alice were home, of course. Caroline struggled to maintain her dignity while she put away her coat and Lily’s, saying nothing except to soothe her daughter. Jered closed his book and announced tonelessly that he was going to bed. He stumbled on the way out of the room. He’d been drinking, too.

But if Alice had, she didn’t show it. “That little girl needs her sleep,” she said flatly. “Don’t you, Lily?”

“I’ll put her to bed,” Caroline said.

“She doesn’t look like she needs much putting. Asleep on her feet, at this hour. Bed’s warm and waiting, Lily! You go along, love, all right?”

Lily yawned agreeably and waddled off, leaving her mother defenseless.

“She slept late this morning,” Caroline offered.

“She’s not sleeping well at all. She’s afraid for her father.”

“I’m tired, too,” Caroline said.

“But not too tired to commit adultery?”

Caroline stared, hoping she hadn’t heard correctly.

“To fornicate with a man not your husband,” Alice said. “Do you have another word for it?”

“This is beneath you.”

“Perhaps you should find another place to sleep. I’ve written Liam in Boston. He’ll want you home as soon as we can book passage. I’ve had to apologize. On your behalf.”

“You had no right to do that.”

“Every right, I think.”

“Guilford is dead!” It was her only counterargument, and she regretted using it so hastily. It lost its gravity, somehow, in this under-heated parlor.

Alice sniffed. “You can’t possibly know that.”