Tulips in Winter: An Excerpt from A Remedy Against Sin

Happy June to you all! When I was thinking about this month’s theme, “Blossoming Love,” I realized that I rarely set a story in summer. Nor do I have many flowers in my novels (or, when I do, I tend to put them in seasons not meant for those flowers)!

All of these thoughts brought to mind my first novel, A Remedy Against Sin, published in 2016, but written over many years. (I wrote the first chapter in 2008, abandoned the story, and then wrote the rest in snatches between 2011 and 2016.)

At the time, I was fascinated by the early marriage scenario. (Side question: do you like this trope? Why or why not?) I was especially interested in Elizabeth’s emotional state after her unexpected marriage. When I was trying to imagine Elizabeth on the morning after her first night with Darcy, the first image that popped into my head was yellow tulips. I could just see Elizabeth staring at a vase full of yellow tulips in her posh London home, wondering to herself, What has just happened to me?

What was happening, I suppose, was a very gradual journey toward love. Though the excerpt below is set in the dead of winter, I wish you a very happy start to summer (unless you’re in the southern hemisphere, in which case this excerpt is meant especially for you)!

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Excerpt from Chapter Seven of A Remedy Against Sin

The morning after, she woke as she always had: slowly, with the dawn, the light creeping into her room until black became gray and gray a multitude of muted colors. She lay on her side, blinking. Why were there flowers on her vanity? There were no yellow tulips at Longbourn, and besides, was it not winter? A dream, she thought, closing her eyes. Then she rolled over and felt the sheets against her skin.

Not a dream.

She pulled the blankets about her and thought suddenly of her sisters. Even in the coldest month of winter, Lydia jumped out of bed each morning, as if the bedclothes were suffocating her. Of course, she never jumped earlier than eight, and usually it was closer to ten. Jane and Kitty were less emphatic, but once awake, they rolled over and put their feet on the ground, unable to go back to sleep. Only Mary, industrious and sober Mary, had to be dragged out of bed by Sarah, the poor maid who, each night, was ordered by Mary herself not to let her sleep past eight.

Elizabeth rarely slept past daybreak, yet she took a good quarter of an hour to rise. Hers was a leisurely embrace of the morning, for there was nothing quite so delicious as burrowing into one’s pillow and contemplating the comfort of sleep without actually sleeping.

It was not sleep, however, that she contemplated now. Neither did she did allow herself to think of the night before, so instead she wondered about the etiquette of rising in this place she was now to call home. At Longbourn, there were two rules: tiptoe past Mama’s door and avoid the breakfast table until half past nine. Angering either Mrs. Bennet or Mrs. Hill first thing in the morning made for a difficult day indeed.

At her uncle’s house on Gracechurch Street, where three children under the age of nine resided, the mornings were cheerful and chaotic. No one in the household slept past eight, and any guest who might want to sleep later learned to cover his head with pillows if he wished to block the sounds of footsteps on the stairs or laughter in the corridor.

Elizabeth assumed that the awakening of the Darcy household would be proper and correct, as formal as Darcy himself. Then she sat up, saw the tangle of sheets, and realized that formal was not, after all, a very good word to describe him.

Forcing herself to her feet, she pulled the bell rope and went to the washstand, only to find the urn empty (she had used all the water after…well, after). So she sat at the vanity and began brushing the knots out of her hair—until she remembered what she, what he, what they both had done there the night before.

Elizabeth threw down the brush and resorted to pacing the room.

Thankfully, Nancy arrived with tea a few minutes later, and for a long while, she did nothing except stand by the window in her dressing gown, letting the cup of tea go cold in her hand. Her room looked out on the small garden that separated the townhouse from the stables. When a figure emerged from the main stable door, Elizabeth took a quick step back, realizing she wore nothing but her nightclothes. The figure did stop, but not to look up. Instead, he—she could see now that the figure wore trousers—bent over, almost as if seized by some dreadful pain.

“Nancy, come here! Do you think he is unwell?”

Her maid hurried to the window and looked out.

“Oh, poor Edgar drank like a fish last night and—” Nancy stopped abruptly and blushed. “Excuse me, ma’am.”

Checking her smile, Elizabeth watched “poor Edgar” stagger back to the stables before she stepped away from the window and let the curtains fall back into place.

“Please don’t be too hard on him, Mrs. Darcy,” Nancy whispered, looking down at her feet. “He received some bad news yesterday.”

“I am sorry to hear that. I hope his family are all in health.”

Nancy glanced up at her. “That’s just it, ma’am. It was his mum.”

“Oh!”

“She was sickly, and they were expecting it,” Nancy said, her voice gaining some confidence. “I never knew her. He came from some other part of the country, not a Derbyshire boy. Still…”

“When you see him next, you must pass along my condolences.” As soon as she spoke, she wished she had not. What good were the mistress’s condolences, delivered by her maid? Better to speak with Mrs. Bradley—or should it be Forester?—to see about time off for Edgar to attend the burial.

Nancy smiled and said, “That’s very kind of you. Would you like me to brush your hair now?”

Despite her earlier reservations, Elizabeth sat at the vanity looking (she thought) fairly well composed, all things considered. Had she really spent the morning fretting about what she had done last night? She was the mistress of a large household now; she had more important matters to concern herself with than what she had done with her husband in the privacy of her own bedroom.

This line of thought, along with the glow of self-righteousness that accompanied it, stayed with her until she actually saw her husband in the breakfast parlor. She had gone to the room expecting it to be empty; it was only quarter of eight, and she knew no one, even in the country, who broke their fast before nine. Yet there he was, sitting at the small table in the center of the room, holding a teacup in his right hand and a newspaper in his left. He seemed uninterested in both; his teacup hovered inches below his lips, and his gaze was focused not on the paper but at the window beyond it.

She was struck then by the paradox of their marriage: that she could know this man so intimately without knowing him at all. What had caught his attention? The lone cardinal flitting between the scraggly bushes in the back garden? The sky, so blue that one might have been tricked into thinking the calendar read June instead of December? Or did he stare blindly at the glass, seeing nothing except the thoughts in his own head?

How different it might have been with a man she loved. She would have come into the room smiling and asked, “What do you see, my dear?” Yet the previous night, which should have brought her closer to understanding him, made her feel even more uncertain.

It was not, however, in her nature to remain silent.

“What do you see?”

At the sound of her voice, he flinched.

She had not smiled or used an endearment, and she realized only after the fact how important such niceties were for making such a question sound philosophical rather than impudent.

“Good morning,” he said, rising and bowing.

When he straightened, she tried to meet his eye, but he looked at some point beyond her. Would all their mornings be a performance enacted to erase what they had done the night before?

Determined now to provoke a response, she sat in the chair closest to his and bumped his arm as she reached for the teapot. He handed her the sugar dish, his fingers touching hers.

“I, too, spent much of my morning looking out a window.” She had meant the words to sound cutting, somehow, but her voice cracked at the end.

Now he met her eye. “What did you see?”

_{© 2016 Christina Morland}

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Winter can be a difficult season for both love and flowers (the yellow tulips in this excerpt were from the hothouse, of course). Luckily, Elizabeth and Darcy find their way to warmer days. Thanks for reading!