Page 18 of The Education of Ivy Leavold
“How could she threaten to kill herself when she knew she was pregnant?” I asked. “Even Violet is not that selfish.”
“You know what I think? I think she was desperate. Think about it—both she and Julian knew the child couldn’t be his. If he divorced her and let that be known, the shame would have destroyed her. Her life would have been over, and while I know Julian would have provided for her, she would never be able to show her face in society again. But if she remained married, she’d still have the status of Markham Hall in addition to providing—what the world would believe to be—a firstborn heir. She could still find a way to escape and go back to London through more polite, traditional means.”
“So she had to stay married to him. No matter what.” I chewed on the pad of my thumb as I pictured it all—Violet’s fair face alight with fear and rage, Mr. Markham’s rigid with anger and rejection.
“But she hated him,” Silas reminded me. “Had it simply been a question of accepting his wife’s sin—a sin that happened before their nuptials—then I have no doubt he would have accommodated. Raised the child as his own. But she made him acutely miserable, made it clear that she hated him and hated being married to him. She called him names I’ve never heard—even at school—not to mention she’d been sleeping with his valet, Gerald.”
“Gareth,” I corrected. “Why on earth does Mr. Markham keep him employed? Surely that would be grounds for letting him go?”
Silas gave me another smile, rueful this time. “I suppose there was a sense of brotherly suffering. You never saw Violet in her prime, did you? She was relentless and devastating and the mistress of the estate. No gentleman could have refused her. Certainly no servant in her employ. I think it was apparent from fairly early on that he had been coerced by the nature of his position to capitulating, and Mr. Markham felt sympathetic to that. Given that Violet had seduced and hoodwinked him as well.”
It was all so complicated, this mix of loyalties and betrayals. I couldn’t keep track of who deserved my sympathy and who deserved my disregard, and I certainly couldn’t keep straight how much fear I should allot to Mr. Markham.
And as much as I wanted to trust Silas, as much as I instinctively liked him, he was Mr. Markham’s oldest friend. They shared a bed and they shared women—would they also not share and keep each other’s secrets? How could I be certain that Silas wasn’t deluded—or worse, lying to protect my future husband?
The sun was truly dawning now, pink and orange streaks radiating past the pitched roofs and gables of the city. More people crowded the streets, the din of wheels and voices beginning to soar above the paving stones to mingle with the birds chirping and the wind blowing past swinging signs and creaking branches.
“I am telling you this,” Silas said, as if tuned into my thoughts, “because most people don’t know, but I think you deserve to. And Julian deserves your trust. See, after that horrific fight, she vanished. Disappeared. Julian joined us in the parlor, saying that Violet had gone to her room to rest, but would be down shortly. She never came.”
“Did you look for her?”
“Yes. He didn’t want to highlight her absence, so he waited until the guests had left, and he and I searched the house and grounds. The housekeeper helped too. That’s when he told me that Violet had taunted him about her and Gareth, threatened to sleep with Gareth that very night to prove Mr. Markham’s impotence when it came to following through on his threats of divorce. He was furious, expecting to come upon the two in every corner, and also terrified, because Violet had really sounded hysterical enough to hurt herself, and he worried for her safety.”
“How could she say such things?” I wondered. “About Gareth, I mean, when her position was so tenuous? Surely she would be more calculating than that.”
“She was like a cornered animal, ready to lash out at anything and anyone. For what it’s worth, it deeply wounded Julian. Fidelity is something he prizes himself on—don’t look so surprised, Miss Leavold—and he was unfailingly faithful to both Arabella and Violet.”
“It’s not hard to be faithful for a month,” I said, more to myself than to Silas.
He heard anyway. “Don’t be so suspicious. He would have been loyal to both of them until the end of his days. But it cuts both ways: he expected the same loyalty of Violet and she so blatantly refused. Yes, this understandably hurt and angered him very much.”
Silas might have been trying to reassure me, but I felt anything but reassured in that moment. All he had conjured in my mind was the image of jealous wrath, of a black bitter hurt that might not have thought twice about cutting a strap on a saddle.
“What I’m trying to say is that despite his anger and jealousy, Julian still searched everywhere. He still worried about her. And when we couldn’t find her, he sent a servant to Scarborough to notify the constables and mobilize a larger search. We agreed to sleep for a few hours, and then resume looking at dawn.”
“But she was dead by dawn.”
“Yes.”
Mr. Markham was stirring now, and the sound of his long limbs moving in the sheets made me drop my voice and step closer to Silas. “So you were apart from him for part of the night?”
“Yes, but Ivy, he couldn’t have murdered Violet. What man searches for a woman in the frozen dark for hours,sends for the police, and then decides to kill her a couple hours later? What kind of man would do that?”
I didn’t know. Because part of me didn’t know what kind of man Mr. Markham was at all.
The rest of our sojourn in York was largely uneventful. Mr. Markham took me to the silk warehouse and then to a fashion house, where all manner of dress styles were presented to me. Shoes, a veil, jewelry, new underthings—the process of attiring a wealthy man’s bride was as arduous as it was overwhelming, and I found myself deferring to Mr. Markham’s choices because I simply did not care.
The only thing out of the ordinary that occurred was running—almost literally—into a strange man in our hotel lobby, where we had stopped to offload several hatboxes and other sundry items. Mr. Markham had been directing the porter to our room and I had been searching for the gloves I wanted to wear to dinner that night, when I felt legs brush against my skirt. I turned to see a short man, quite old, with clouds of white hair around his head.
“I beg your pardon,” he said softly.
“No apology is necessary,” I said and then went back to my search, assuming the encounter was over.
“Are you Ivy Leavold?”
I straightened, quite surprised. No one here in Yorkshire could possibly know me by sight, outside of the residents of Stokeleigh and Mr. Markham’s circle of friends. “Yes,” I answered hesitantly. “I am she.”
He nodded, a serene motion that indicated he had already known the answer, but was genuinely pleased to have heard it just the same. Everything about him seemed gentle, inoffensive. “Miss Leavold—”
