Never Come to Rest by Keira Michelle Telford

Author:Keira Michelle Telford
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, azw
Publisher: Venatic Press
Published: 2015-12-16T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Friday June 27, 1913

Vera Mae stirs another spoonful of honey into her tea, waiting for her brother’s response to her news, fully expecting him to be displeased with her—as he always has been. This is the first time she’s visited her family’s Oxfordshire estate since her marriage, and everything on home turf is just as awkward as she remembers. No matter how many years pass, being here always makes her feel like a little girl. A disobedient little girl.

“For goodness sake, say something, William.” She prompts her brother out of his silence. “Or are we to sit here gawping at each other all afternoon?”

“What is there to say? You have made your decision.” William straightens his thick mustache and sighs, his disappointment evident. “You will not marry Reginald.”

“I cannot.” Vera Mae gazes across the lawn on which she played as a child, glad that they opted to take tea outside rather than in the stuffy old house, every room suffused with unpleasant memories. “I do not love him.”

“Is there someone else?”

“It’s complicated.” She watches her young nieces and nephews chase a good-natured Labrador back and forth, teasing him with a ball, unable to remember a moment in her own childhood when she was that carefree. “I cannot say that you will be pleased.”

“Oh, God, is he a Jew?” William glowers at her across the small garden table, prepared for a fight. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone and fallen for a bloody Jew?”

“Not a Jew.” Vera Mae anticipates an even worse reaction to the truth. “Nor a man.”

On account of the proximity of the children, William stifles his worst objections into a series of half-mumbled expletives. “I thought we were over all this nonsense, Vera.”

“I have tried.” Vera Mae keeps her voice appropriately hushed. “I have done things your way my whole life. I have pleased you and our father, now he and my husband are in the grave, and I wish to please myself. Is that so wrong?”

“You will be a disgrace.”

Those words no longer hurt her. “I have always been a disgrace to this family, William.”

She recalls being caught cuddling one of the housemaids when she was thirteen. An act which resulted in the maid’s immediate dismissal without a character and her rapid enrollment in a finishing school far, far away. Out of sight, out of mind.

“Nevertheless, I have done all that was asked of me, despite my feelings.” Vera Mae suppresses her childhood trauma. “I married the man our father chose for me, and never once did I utter a single word of a complaint. I was a good and faithful wife.”

“What has changed in you?”

“I have met the most beautiful and tender woman.” Vera Mae smiles at the thought of Eulalie. “She’s a—”

“Spare me the details of your vulgarity.” William cringes.

“What is vulgar about it, William? It is love, that is all.”

“Love?” He grimaces. “You love this woman?” The concept is as unfathomable to him as a man marrying a goat.

“Yes, I love her.” Vera Mae clasps a hand over her heart.

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