Dark Season (3 page)

“I know you loved her.”

Isidore tried to sneer, but his face had gone numb. His eyes didn’t feel hot anymore but cold. Vitreous.

Clement had turned to lean over the fire, bracing himself with both hands on the mantle.

You don’t know. You don’t know anything about it.

Clement held that posture, contemplative or despairing, Isidore couldn’t guess. Clement had become a mystery to him. There were so many things they didn’t know about each other anymore. It occurred to Isidore that he didn’t want to let this state of affairs continue. That maybe he could change it. He opened his mouth.

“Have you been painting?” The question surprised him as much as Clement. It came from that other life they’d shared, their life before. Dull days of summer parties in the country. Long, peaceful days. He, sketching the beauties by some babbling brook. Clement, with his easel and that high, eager step, trampling the heather.

“From time to time,” said Clement slowly, straightening. “Actually, I’ve been working on a series.”

“Watercolor?” Five years ago, Clement had been making small studies of kitchen gardens. Herbs. Flowers. Vegetables. Very controlled. Very precise. He had the eye, and the inclinations, of a taxonomer.

“Oils.”

“Ah.” Isidore couldn’t get out more than a syllable, but things had clicked into place. That sharp scent. Turpentine. Clement must have spent the evening painting in the library. That’s where he’d set up his easel years ago, in front of the tall, south-facing window. The room received excellent light. But not at night. Clement seemed to anticipate his thoughts.

“I hardly need to see to work on these canvases,” he said. “I’m not painting from life. Not waking life anyway.”

“Dreams.” Isidore’s clothing was still damp, but the fire had finally managed to warm his extremities. He felt a languor stealing over him. It was dark in the room, and it took him a moment to realize his eyes had drifted shut. He heard Clement sit down beside him.

“Nightmares.” Clement’s voice was low. “It’s a kind of bestiary. No one’s seen them of course.”

“No,” said Isidore, eyes still closed. “Of course not.” Who would Clement show them to? He had always been Clement’s audience. And Clement, his.

“And you?” asked Clement.

“I gave it up.” Isidore stood abruptly but had to sit down again.
Damn.

“You’re not going to get to that brandy.”

“I might.” Isidore waited for his stomach to settle. “If I keep trying.”

Clement chuckled. There was real mirth in it. Warmth. Friendship. All at once, the tension dissipated. The night seemed like it might wind down, it might end. And there’d be a new day.

“I took up woodworking,” said Isidore after a moment. “How’s that for an aristocratic pastime? I learned from a Neapolitan hunchback who slept in the same room as his donkey.”

“And where did you sleep?” Isidore could hear the smile in Clement’s voice.

“On the other side of the donkey.” He stood and this time kept his feet. “I preferred it to any night I ever spent under my father’s roof.”

“It’s not his roof anymore.”

Isidore ignored this. He reached and took the bottle down from the shelf.

“Sid … ” A warning note.

Isidore sank to his knees in front of Clement’s chair.

“One toast,” he whispered. “To Phillipa. Then I’ll go.” He lifted the decanter, swallowed, and passed the bottle to Clement.

Clement considered the bottle. “I’ve said goodbye to Phillipa,” he said at last. “I won’t toast her. I’ll drink to the future.” He drank and stood. Isidore squinted up at him, no longer caring that he must seem ridiculous.

“You’re staying here, Sid,” said Clement. “We’ll get you into a spare bedchamber. You need dry clothes and a night’s sleep.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Isidore murmured, stretching out on the carpet, “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“Fine.” Clement stepped over him and returned the brandy to the desk. “Five years,” he said quietly, as though to himself.

Isidore opened his mouth, but this time no sound came out. The carpet was thin, but he felt that he was sinking into it. He was relieved. It was that or slide off the face of the earth.

I was meant to sleep here
, he thought. In this house, the house where it happened. If I’m going to sink down into hell, let it happen tonight. Let the floor open.

“Shall I have Jenkins bring you dry clothes?”

Isidore managed to turn his head from side to side. He was done speaking. Just like that, his words for the night had run out.

“How about a donkey then?” Luckily Clement didn’t expect an answer. He was already leaving, shutting the study door behind him with a soft click. Isidore listened to Clement’s muffled footsteps fade down the hall. He rolled onto his side and let the fire warm his back. He would sleep alone with his sins. If he woke up in a pit of fire, so be it. The waiting at least would be over.

And if he didn’t? If he woke and there was no pit of fire? Could he stop running? Stay in England. Attend to his estate. Rekindle old friendships. Say goodbye, as Clement had. After five years, say goodbye to Phillipa. Let her rest. Let himself live. Start again. He had no words left, but he felt his lips make the shape.
Goodbye.

And suddenly the darkness in the room didn’t press down as heavily, and he slept.

Ella didn’t dare open her eyes. The lids pulsed unpleasantly. The pain in her head had subsided to a dull ache. Her limbs felt heavy. She tried to move them, and they resisted. It was a coverlet, she realized. A heavy blanket weighing her down. The softness of the featherbed swallowing her up. She was in her bedroom. Papa’s hand was smoothing her hair from her forehead. The dear rumble of his voice comforted her.

“Rest, my darling. The worst has passed. You’re safe.”

Until the next time.

She gathered her strength to force her swollen lips into a smile. She would never express her bitterness, her despair. Not to Papa. Papa always believed she was getting better.

“This was the last one,” he would say. “The very last.” She loved him for it, his stubborn, groundless optimism, even when it made her want to scream.

“I’m sorry.” She pushed the air through her swollen lips.
I’m sorry, Papa. It happened again.

She listened for his deep, assuring answer—
Sleep, little one. Sleep. We can do anything in dreams
—and felt the hand on her forehead turn over. Knuckles pressed her damp skin.

“You’ve haven’t got a fever. Can you sit up? Are you thirsty?” It was a woman speaking, not Papa. Never again Papa. Papa was dead.

Where was she? Memory came flooding back. Cousin Alfred calling her into Papa’s study. But it wasn’t Papa’s study anymore. It was Alfred’s study. He’d already taken down Papa’s maps and mounted his loathsome hunting trophies on the walls.

“This can’t come as a surprise. You must have known you couldn’t stay here. I wrote to the head doctor of a colony in Zurich. I had his response today. The regimen is almost shockingly liberal. It includes concerts and dancing. Sunday walks in the village. The air is very good. You’ll be happy, he assures me. It’s a happy place.” Alfred shoved the letter across Papa’s desk. She stared at it, and at his pudgy hands. Unimaginable, that a man such as he had brought down those proud, swift stags whose heads reared from their wooden plaques. What would he be without his guns? Without her papa’s estate? What if he had to fight a stag to the death with just those fat fists against antlers and hooves? What if he had to use those hands to earn his own fortune?

He didn’t like the way she was looking at him. She could see it in his face. He was nervous. She made him uncomfortable. It was not good of her to enjoy it. But she did not drop her eyes. He kept his face a polite mask only a moment longer. He held the letter out to her, and when she didn’t take it, his lips turned down into the nasty sneer she remembered from her childhood.

“Or I could put you in an asylum,” he said, throwing the letter carelessly over his shoulder. “It’s more than within my rights. For your own sake, of course, Ella. You’re a danger to yourself. Do you know a bad bite to the tongue can be fatal? The lingual artery runs through it. If you sever it, your life can pour out of your mouth.” He clacked his teeth together then smiled with closed lips.

She refused to show any emotion. It was easier than she would have imagined. Her heart was in the coffin with Papa. This man couldn’t hurt her. He’d always hated her, hated her because he feared her. Even that knowledge didn’t hurt her anymore. So what if people feared her? There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t cure her brain. Mr. Norton had explained it to her. Her “anatomical abnormalities,” as he’d called them. Damaged brain. Epilepsy. And now—this last was her own diagnosis—a dead heart. Let her cousin do his worst. She was ready.

“I could also have you put in jail,” he said. “You’re a danger to yourself, but you’re also a danger to others. I’m soon to bring a wife into this house. I need to think of my offspring, Ella. I’ve spoken with Mr. Norton about your condition. Fits are the least of it. In advanced stages, the afflicted experience periods of delirium. Mania. A fury comes upon them. They commit unspeakable acts. Physical violence. Even murder.”

This was too much. “So you’ll put me in prison for the murder of your unborn children?” The sound she made wasn’t a laugh. It was the result of a joyless spasm of her diaphragm. “Have you found legal precedent for such an act?”

He considered a cufflink. It looked familiar. Were the letters
GA
engraved in its gold? Had he removed it from Papa’s sleeve before the coffin lid closed? He sighed. “I would explain to the authorities that you’d attacked me. Mr. Norton would testify to the possibility. But I would prefer to send you on your happy way to Zurich. I don’t want any scandal.”

“I am sure you do not,” she said. “Have you told your betrothed that your nearest living relation suffers from a hereditary disorder? Is she a gambling woman?”

“I haven’t,” he said, shortly. “But we both know your late mother was the carrier. The Arlington family tree is well pruned and has always produced flawless fruits. No murderesses. No imbeciles. Not even a clubbed foot. It’s enough to make me wonder if your mother was entirely … devoted … to her husband.”

A slap in the face would have been worse. Rage choked her. She rose from her chair. She wanted to throw something at him, but the books, the lamp, the letter opener, the sealing wax, they were all Papa’s things. Even Papa’s pot of ink would be sullied if it touched him.

“So you’ll go to Zurich?” he said, rising. “I’ve hired Mr. Norton, and a nurse and a lady’s maid, to escort you. It’s for the best, Ella.” He tried to gentle his voice. “I do want the best for you. I wish you hadn’t been born into this family. And I wish your father hadn’t brought you up with false expectations. But I do wish you well.”

The mention of Papa had undone her. The heart she’d thought dead in her breast throbbed within her.

The morning light was streaming through the study window, lighting up the blond whiskers that curled away from his cheeks. With the whiskers, his round face seemed a foot wide. “Arlington Manor will blossom without you. You cast a pall on your father’s life, and I won’t let you cast one on mine. God knows it’s not your fault you were born as you are.” He rounded the desk and came near her. She did not flinch away. He walked softly—the hunter in him—and she realized he was approaching to deliver the deathblow. “But you are tainted. And you will not remain under this roof. Which, lest you forget, is my roof.”

As if she could forget. As if she would ever forget.

But that wasn’t the right memory. Something was missing—Days? Weeks?—between Papa’s study and this bed where she found herself. What had happened? She squeezed her eyes shut, tried desperately to summon an image. Oh, yes. She’d ridden for the first time on the train. The landscape had rushed by. Green flashes, then gray and more gray.

Let me not have a fit.
That’s what she’d prayed the whole journey. For the past several years, they’d been coming less frequently. But if she had a fit on the train and the nurse and Mr. Norton attended her, undressed her, all would be lost. They would find the velvet pouch she’d sewn in her skirts, the pouch that contained a chatelaine watch, a gold necklace, a gold bracelet, two jeweled hair clips, two small silver spoons, a silver thimble, a pearl necklace and earrings, and a ring set with a tiny blue sapphire. Everything of value she’d had the good sense to hide before Alfred confiscated her possessions.
His
possessions, he’d called them. She needed them. They were all the security she had in the world.

As the train approached London, her courage almost failed her. It was a mad idea, running. She would be lost and alone. She would have to sell her last remaining tokens of home for room and board, and even her cache of treasures wouldn’t last long. She would convulse on the mud of an alley, and rats would lick her cold bones. But it would be better than life as a prisoner in another country. It would be better than life in an asylum. In London, she could mingle with families, even if she couldn’t have one of her own. She would survive until Mr. Norton’s predictions came to pass and her disease progressed to the point where she felt herself going mad. Then she would throw herself into the Thames. She refused to be locked up, studied as she beat her heels on the floor and chewed through her cheeks, forced to live when she had decided she should die.

It was sin to destroy oneself. But not to let the river swallow what God had already destroyed.

She thrashed her head on the pillow. The knuckles pressed against her forehead again, succeeded by a cool washcloth.

“Be still, miss. Be easy. You’re safe now.” The woman’s voice was kind. “Easy. Easy.”

And with something like ease, Ella slipped into the shadows.

When next she woke, it was morning. She could smell the faint odor of freshly baked bread. Birds were making a small racket. She opened her eyes. She had a blurred impression of blue and gold, which, blinking, she resolved into flocked wallpaper with a bright floral motif. She was in a well-appointed bedchamber. A wardrobe stood against one wall. A tidy fire glowed in the fireplace. An empty writing desk was positioned near the window. And in the blue damask chair a young maid, round and neat, was watching her closely.