Enchantress of Numbers Page 4

  At last they turned onto the road to Halnaby Hall. A thick blanket of snow covered the grounds, and the carriage slowed as the driver steered around or pushed through the drifts. As they approached the house, Annabella’s spirits rose to glimpse lights shining in the windows through the false twilight of the storm. In front of the house, all of her parents’ servants and tenants had lined up to greet them. She had known most of them since she was a girl, and their faces, proud and cheerful and full of expectation, warmed her heart.

  When the carriage halted, Byron tore open the door, jumped down, and strode into the house without a word for anyone. Shocked, Annabella composed herself and waited for the footman to help her descend. Fighting to conceal her dismay, she made her way down the receiving line alone, forcing a pleasant smile through her tears and thanking each servant and tenant for the kind welcome. With a grateful cry she embraced Jane Minns, a girl from a local farm with whom she had practically grown up, a newlywed herself and trusted confidante who served as her lady’s maid whenever Annabella resided at Halnaby Hall. When she came to Mrs. Milligan just outside the front door, she asked the unflappable housekeeper to prepare dinner, and sighed in relief to hear that it was nearly ready and would be served within the hour.

  Crossing the threshold alone, she removed her cape, wiped the snow from her shoes, and followed her husband’s wet footprints through the foyer until they faded down a corridor. The door to the drawing room stood open, so she peered inside and discovered Byron pouring himself a brandy.

  “Dinner will be served soon. I’m sure you must be famished.” As for herself, she had no appetite. “My mother instructed the housekeeper to prepare the master suite for us to share. I hope that pleases you.”

  He shrugged and gulped his brandy. “I’ve always preferred to sleep alone, or with one of my dogs, but do as you please. One animal is as good as any other, as long as she is young.”

  Annabella took a deep, shaky breath. “I can’t imagine what I’ve done to offend you, but this is my wedding day. Please, if you can’t be affectionate, at least be civil.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Affectionate?” He set down his glass and extended his hand to her. “Will affection appease you? I can be affectionate. Close the door and come here.”

  She took his hand, and before she had quite figured out his intentions, they quickly consummated the marriage on the couch. The act gave her only a little of the pain her mother had warned her about and some of the pleasure Annabella had anticipated, so it was not unpleasant. Afterward, as she lay in his embrace and he kissed her brow and fondly called her his “dear philosopher-wife,” she dared hope that after the initial shock of their irrevocable vows faded, he might become content.

  Her hopes suffered a blow early the next morning. They shared a bed, as she had hoped they would, although the custom of separate bedrooms was more popular among people of their rank. The room was cold despite the fire on the hearth, so upon retiring they had drawn the heavy bed-curtains closed to ward off the chill. A few hours before dawn, Annabella was jolted awake by a rough shake of the mattress and Byron’s cry, “Good God, I am surely in hell!” Blinking, she sat up and glanced frantically about, her pulse racing until she discovered what had disturbed her husband—the flickering light from the fireplace seen through the scarlet bed-curtains gave the illusion that the room was engulfed in menacing flames. Reason required that she take no offense at his outburst, so she murmured a few soothing phrases until he fell back against his pillow and sank into sleep.

  After dawn they woke again, and upon rising they discovered at least a foot of snow blanketing the grounds outside their window, and in the distance, ice sparkling like crystal on the lake. It was a beautiful scene, but the room was frigid despite the fresh fire the chambermaid had started while they slept. As they washed and dressed, Annabella drew closer to the fire to warm her hands. Her new wedding ring, gleaming softly in the firelight, slipped loosely on her finger, so she bound it with a piece of black ribbon until it fit more securely.

  “What are you doing?” asked Byron sharply. “What an omen of horror and death you’ve created! Remove that ribbon immediately.”

  “It’s only a ribbon,” she murmured, but she obeyed. They finished dressing in silence, and then, as they stood side by side warming themselves by the fire before they descended to breakfast, Annabella’s ring suddenly slipped from her finger and tumbled into the grate.

  “What have you done?” exclaimed Byron, seizing the poker and dragging the ring from the ashes. Snatching his handkerchief from his pocket, he picked up the ring with it, wiped off the soot, and waited for the ring to cool before thrusting it at Annabella. “Put it back on—or don’t. It matters not. The damage is done.”

  “What on earth do you mean?” Annabella examined the ring, which had survived its ordeal unblemished. “There’s not even the tiniest scratch.”

  “It’s an omen,” he said, agitated. “This marriage is cursed.”

  “Nonsense.” She had no patience for superstition. “This signifies nothing except that my hands are too cold. I’ll wrap a white ribbon around my finger and fit the ring over it. It will not fall off again.”

  He nodded brusquely, but she could tell he was not satisfied.

  Later that day, when a letter arrived from Augusta, Byron became strangely perturbed. He paced the length of the drawing room as he read, his expression fierce and exultant, his eyes fixed on the pages in his hand. “Listen to this,” he commanded. “My sister addresses me, ‘Dearest, first and best of human beings.’ What do you think of that?”

  “I think . . . I think that Augusta is a very loving and generous sister. She clearly thinks the world of you.”

  “You aren’t jealous?”

  “Why should I be?”

  “What if I told you I love her equally in return?”

  She laughed uncertainly. “I would feel very sad and worried if you didn’t love so devoted a sister.”

  “I miss her. I miss her even more than I miss Hobhouse.”

  “So do I.” Annabella could think of few people she missed less than Hobhouse.

  “I miss Augusta so much it tears my heart to bloody shreds. I long for her love, like I crave air to breathe and food and drink.”

  “I believe you have her love whether she is with you or not,” Annabella pointed out, “but if it would comfort you, we could invite her to visit.”

  He whirled about and strode toward her, and instinctively she stepped back when he thrust his face close to hers. “You would do that? You wouldn’t object to her intrusion on our honeymoon?”

  “Of course not. We have three weeks here at Halnaby and a lifetime ahead of us to be alone. We can surely spare your sister a few days.” Tentatively, she laid a hand on his arm. “I love Augusta too. I don’t begrudge the two of you time together.”

  For a moment his despondent scowl gave way to hope, but then he made a sharp, cutting gesture and shook his head. “No. No. That would be a disaster.”

  Bewildered, Annabella attempted levity. “Only if she brings the five children along.”

  “Ah. The children.” His expression softened. “I adore the children. Maybe that would be all right, if she brought them and their host of nannies and nurses.”

  Annabella had not intended to invite the entire Leigh household, but if it would lift Byron out of his miserable mood and salvage their honeymoon, she would not object. But as the days passed, Byron seemed to think better of the idea, and the invitation was never sent.

  Except when they came together for meals and for bed, the newlyweds were most often apart, he writing furiously in Sir Ralph’s study, she reading philosophical and religious works she hoped would help her better understand her mercurial husband. Byron’s moods shifted erratically from contrition to despair, and when he interrupted his writing to spend time with her, he rambled on and on about the history of madness
in his family, unspecified crimes he had committed—terrible, unspeakable crimes—and the curse that shadowed their marriage.

  Annabella listened with increasing dread and apprehension, wishing that he would unburden his conscience to her if it would relieve his torment, deeply frightened by what he might reveal if he did. God had abandoned him long ago, he declared, and his deformed foot marked him as cursed and fated for hell from the moment of his birth. He claimed that he had two natural children and another wife, but when she asked the name of the woman and where she resided, he would not say, so she did not believe him. He confessed seductions, not only of Lady Caroline Lamb but of another married woman, Lady Frances Webster, with whom he had dallied while he and Annabella were exchanging letters about his path to redemption. She recoiled from that admission as if he had struck her, but she reminded herself that they had not been engaged then, so he had not betrayed her, not really.

  One night as they lay together in bed, he told her that there was yet another seduction in his past, one far worse than those he had already confessed, so terrible and wrong that he dared not speak of it.

  “Does Augusta know about this?” she asked.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t mention this to her.”

  “You must confide in someone,” she persisted. “I’m your wife, and your secrets are safe with me. Let me help you. Let me share the burden of your conscience.”

  “No. No one must know.”

  Annabella refrained from pointing out that at least one other person already knew. Muffling a sigh, she drew closer to him and rested her head on his chest.

  “You deserve a softer pillow than my heart,” Byron murmured, and sank into sleep.

  In the morning when they sat down to breakfast, she repeated her offer to be his confidante.

  “You mean my confessor,” he retorted. “You can’t absolve my sins if we don’t practice the same faith.” He spread butter on toast, then gestured with the knife. “Go on, convert me. I dare you to try.”

  “I will not. Your own dispassionate reflection on the state of your soul would accomplish that more effectively than anything I could say.”

  “You feel no Christian charity for me, then, only contempt.”

  “That’s not true,” she protested. “I feel . . . sorry for you.”

  He almost choked on his bread, and he gulped tea to wash it down. “Sorry for me?” he spluttered. “Because I’m beyond salvation? Because my sins are unforgivable?”

  “I don’t believe they are, but no, not because of that.” She steeled herself. “Because you married a woman you do not love. I never would have married you if I had known that you did not love me. Be that as it may, I love you, and I will always be what I’ve long promised to be—your true friend.”

  He studied her across the table, a smirk playing in the corners of his mouth. “Then if I were unfaithful, you would not resent it?”

  She would indeed, but carefully she replied, “I have been taught that a wife should not notice . . . deviation.”

  “Then you would let me be unfaithful?”

  “As your true friend, I love you too much to let you do anything that would injure you.”

  “You don’t truly love me, then. A woman cannot truly love a man unless she also loves his crimes. No other love is worthy of the name.”

  Annabella strongly disagreed, and she told him so, but she would not let him see how deeply it pained her to think that he might already be contemplating an illicit affair.

  She was close to despair—scarcely able to eat, unable to compose her thoughts enough to write reassuring letters to her parents, exhausted from being jolted awake from restless slumbers by imagined noises.

  Then, as if his fragmentary confessions had relieved an equal measure of his torment, Byron’s tempests began to subside. He still referred bitterly to his mysterious crimes, but he was calmer and less vicious when he did, and his old courtesy and spontaneous generosity, which she had badly missed, returned from wherever he had banished them. By day he and Annabella strolled together on snowy paths through the dormant gardens or enjoyed spirited discussions about literature and poetry by the fireside, and at night a new tenderness brought a glorious warmth to their lovemaking. The hours Annabella cherished most of all were spent in the library, Byron laboring upon the last few poems of his new work, Hebrew Melodies, she seated nearby, copying the earlier verses in her neatest hand and preparing the manuscript for submission to his publisher.

  Although she would not break his concentration by rapturously praising his new poems as she copied them, Annabella marveled anew at his prodigious talent, and she glowed to read the transcendent lines she was certain she had inspired.

  She walks in beauty, like the night

  Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

  And all that’s best of dark and bright

  Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

  Thus mellow’d to that tender light

  Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

  Annabella had raven tresses, like the woman in the poem, and her brow was definitely “so soft, so calm, yet eloquent.” How could Byron compose such a paean to her beauty if he did not love her?

  Those happy, industrious moments when they were united in purpose were to Annabella fresh springs in a desert—precious, rare, and essential to life.

  —

  WHEN THEIR HONEYMOON AT HALNABY ended, Annabella and Byron returned to Seaham more cheerful and optimistic than when they had departed three weeks before. Annabella was delighted to see her parents and Mrs. Clermont again, but her greatest happiness came from her husband. There were occasional dark moods, but they were rare and swiftly subsiding. Together they enjoyed the outdoors, climbing craggy bluffs and walking along the shore. And more than ever they enjoyed the sensual pleasures of the bedchamber, where there was no more talk of hellfire or unforgivable crimes.

  Eventually, however, Byron grew restless for London. He offered to go alone and have her join him later, so she could spend more time with her family while he attended to business matters, but Annabella, mindful of his sardonic inquiry about her stance on adultery, insisted upon accompanying him.

  Since it was along the way, Byron proposed to visit Augusta and her children at Six Mile Bottom, the Leigh family country house near Cambridge. Her husband, Colonel George Leigh, was absent on duties for the prince, Byron said, and his sister desperately wanted company.

  For Annabella, the visit proved to be a fortnight of misery, an unmitigated disaster from the moment their carriage halted in front of the house.

  The furious outbursts, excessive drinking, caustic accusations, despairing moods, and bleak allusions to unforgivable crimes that she thought Byron had left behind in Halnaby seized hold of him again. She practiced stoicism and patience, unwilling to engage in the furious arguments he seemed eager to provoke. When he raised his voice, she lowered hers to a murmur. When he kicked over chairs, she busied herself with a book or sewing, waited for him to storm from the room, and set them upright again. If he hoped for a fiery explosion from her, he would have to settle for a slow, cool burn.

  He showed kindness and gentleness to his sister and her children, especially the baby, Elizabeth Medora, but to his wife he offered only spite and contempt. When the children and servants were elsewhere, Byron would humiliate Annabella by telling Augusta about his escapades with Lady Frances Webster and other women, making no effort to conceal that many of his trysts had taken place while they were engaged. At night after the children went to bed, he asked the women to play “kissing games,” as he playfully called them, in which they took turns kissing him while he reclined upon the sofa.

  When he tired of the game, he would turn to Annabella with a sardonic smile and say, “We can amuse ourselves without you, my dear. Go up to bed.” Having dismissed her, he would linger with his sister while Annabella retired alo
ne, and though she would cover her ears with a pillow, their distant laughter and merry conversation mocked her as she dutifully tried to sleep. Byron would join her eventually, jolting her awake long after midnight, drunk and irascible, but as he was disinterested in making love to her, she was usually able to drift back to sleep. Only once, near the end of their visit, were they intimate, but it was a hasty coupling, and Byron spoiled it by saying, “Now that I have her, you will find I can do without you.”

  “Except in this,” she murmured defiantly, but he had already fallen asleep.

  His cruelty grieved and bewildered her, but it was some comfort that Augusta was unfailingly kind, that she gently defended Annabella when Byron’s malevolence flared. But although Byron conformed to his beloved sister’s wishes more readily than to his wife’s, even Augusta could not tame him completely.

  It was a relief when the fortnight passed and the newlyweds continued on to London, leaving Augusta and the rambunctious children and the beloved baby Medora behind. With Lady Melbourne’s help, Byron had leased a gracious residence at 13 Piccadilly Terrace, the home of the widowed Duchess of Devonshire, currently residing in France. It was beautifully furnished and boasted splendid views of Green Park, and Annabella had only just settled in when she learned that she was pregnant.

  Byron rejoiced at the news, and for a time Annabella dared hope that the happiness they had enjoyed during their six weeks at Seaham might be renewed. But it was not to be. Misfortunes descended upon them as thickly and heavily as the snow that had fallen on their wedding day. Annabella’s dear uncle Wentworth died, but the substantial inheritance Byron had hoped would go to Annabella went instead to her mother. When he resorted to putting Newstead Abbey and another property, Rochdale, up for auction, they failed to meet the reserve price, denying him sorely needed income. Creditors harassed him mercilessly, and finally a bailiff was quartered in their luxurious home to ensure that he did not flee to the Continent without paying his debts.