“I had just turned sixteen when I married him. Can you understand what it’s like to be married to a man eighteen years older than yourself when you’re only sixteen? Of course you can’t. No one can. Not even Russell.”

“You didn’t want to stay on in school?”

“I’d planned to. But I’d left school to help on the farm for a few weeks when Dad’s back went bad. It was only a temporary arrangement. I was supposed to return in a month. Marsha Fitzalan gave me work to do so that I wouldn’t fall behind. But I fell behind, and there was William.”

“How do you mean?”

“He’d come to buy a ram from Dad. I took him out to see it. William was…very handsome. I was romantic. He was Heathcliff come to claim Cathy at last, as far as I was concerned.”

“Surely your father had some concern about his sixteen-year-old daughter wanting to marry? And to marry a man so much older than herself?”

He did. Mother as well. But I was stubborn, and William was responsible, respectable, and strong. I think they believed that if they didn’t let me marry him, I would turn out wild and go desperately bad in one way or another. So they gave their consent, and we married.”

“What happened to the marriage?”

“What does a sixteen-year-old girl know about marriage, Inspector?” she asked in answer. “I wasn’t even certain how babies got themselves born when I married William. You’d think a farm girl would have a bit more sense, but you have to remember that I spent most of my free time with the Brontës. Charlotte, Anne, and Emily were always a bit vague when it came down to the details. But I found out quickly enough. Gillian was born before my seventeenth birthday. William was thrilled. He adored her. It was as if his life began the moment he saw Gilly.”

“Yet a number of years passed before you had a second child.”

“That’s because Gilly changed everything between us.”

“How?”

“Somehow she-this tiny, fragile baby- made William discover religion and nothing was quite the same after that.”

“I’ve somehow got the impression he was always religious.”

“Oh no. Not till Gillian. It was as if he couldn’t quite be a good enough father, as if he had to purify his soul to be worthy of a child.”

“How did he do it?”

She laughed shortly at the memory, but the sound was regretful and unamused. “The Bible, confession, daily communion. Within a year of our marriage, he became the backbone of St. Catherine’s and a devoted father.”

“And there you were, a teenager, trying to live with a baby and a saint.”

“That’s exactly what it was like. Except that I didn’t have to worry so much about the baby. I wasn’t quite good enough to care for William’s child. Or perhaps not holy enough because, at any rate, he mostly cared for her himself.”

“What did you do?”

“I retreated to my books.” She had sat nearly motionless through the initial part of their conversation, but now she moved restlessly, getting up and pacing across the room to look out the bay window where York Minster loomed in the distance. But instead of the cathedral, Lynley guessed that Tessa saw the past. “I dreamt that William would become Mr. Darcy. I dreamt that Mr. Knightley would sweep me off my feet. I hoped that any day I might meet Edward Rochester if I only believed enough that my dreams were real.” She crossed her arms in front of her as if that could ward off the pain of that time. “I wanted desperately to be loved. How I wanted to be loved! Can you possibly understand that, Inspector?”

“Who couldn’t understand?” Lynley replied.

“I thought that if we had a second child, we would each have someone special to love. So I…I seduced William back to our bed.”

“Back?”

“Oh yes, back. He’d left me shortly after Gilly was born and had begun to sleep elsewhere. On the couch, in the sewing room, anywhere but with me.”

“Why?”

“He used as an excuse the fact that Gilly’s birth had been so hard on me. He didn’t want me to become pregnant and go through the torture again.”

“There are contraceptives-”

“William’s Catholic, Inspector. There are no contraceptives.” She turned from the window to face them again. The light bled colour from her cheeks, effaced eyebrows and lashes, and deepened the creases from nose to mouth. If she sensed this, she made no move to avoid it. Rather, she remained, as if willing to allow her age to be exposed. She went on.

“But I really think, looking back on it, that it was sex, not conception, that frightened William. At any rate, I got him back to my bed eventually. And eight years after Gilly, Roberta was born.”

“If you had what you wanted-a second baby to love-why did you leave?”

“Because it began again. All of it. She wasn’t mine any more than Gillian had been. I loved my little girls, but I wasn’t allowed near them, not the way I wanted to be. I had nothing.” Although her voice quavered on the last word, she drew herself in, cradling her body tighter, and found control. “All I had once again was Darcy. My books.”

“So you left.”

“I woke up one morning just a few weeks after Roberta was born and I knew that if I stayed I would shrivel to nothing. I was nearly twenty-five. I had two children I wasn’t allowed to love and a husband who had begun to consult the Bible before dressing in the morning. I looked out the window, saw the trail leading to High Kel Moor, and knew I would leave that day.”

“Didn’t he try to stop you?”

“No. Of course I wanted him to. But he didn’t. I walked out of the door and out of his life, carrying just one valise and thirty-four pounds. I came to York.”

“He never came to see you? Never tried to follow you?”

She shook her head. “I never told him where I was. I just ceased to exist. But I’d ceased to exist so many years before for William that what did it matter.”

“Why didn’t you divorce him?”

“Because I never intended to marry again. I came to York longing for an education, not a husband. I planned to work for a while, to save money, to go to London or even emigrate to the States. But six weeks after I arrived in York, everything changed. I met Russell Mowrey.”

“How did you meet?”

She smiled at the memory. “They’d fenced off part of the city when they began the Viking digs.”

“Yes, I recall that.”

“Russell was a graduate student from London. He was part of the excavation team. I’d stuck my head through a bit of a hole in the fence to have a look at the work. And there was Russell. His first words to me were, ‘Jesus, a Norse goddess!’ and then he blushed to the roots of his hair. I think I fell in love with him then. He was twenty-six years old. He wore spectacles that kept slipping down his nose, absolutely filthy trousers, and a university jersey. When he walked over to speak to me, he slipped in the mud and fell directly onto his bottom.”

“Not much of a Darcy,” Lynley said kindly.

“No. So much more. We were married four weeks later.”

“Why didn’t you tell him about William?”

She knotted her brows, appeared to be searching for words that would enable them to understand. “Russell was an innocent. He had such…such an image of me. He saw me as a kind of Viking princess, a snow queen. How could I tell him I had two children and a husband that I’d left on a farm in the dales?”

“What would have changed if he’d known?”

“Nothing, I suppose. But at the time, I believed everything would have. I believed that he wouldn’t want me if he knew, that he wouldn’t be willing to wait for me through a divorce. I’d been looking for love, Inspector. And finally, here it was. Could I take a chance that it might escape me?”

“But you’re only two hours from Keldale here. Were you never worried that William might one day show up in your life? Even as a chance encounter on the street?”

“William never left the dales. Not once in the years that I knew him. He had everything there: his children, his religion, his farm. Why on earth would he ever come to York? Besides, I thought at first that we’d go to London. Russell’s family is there. I’d no idea that he’d want to settle here. But here we stayed. We had Rebecca five years later. Then William eighteen months after that.”